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SynBERC puts Berkeley on the synthetic biology map
A new UC Berkeley center for synthetic biology research could transform the biotechnology, high-tech, pharmaceutical and chemical industries, researchers say, by providing cheaper drugs, cleaner fuels, biological sensors, replacement organs from stem cells and other novel materials.
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Berkeley ChemE and BioE professor Jay Keasling is director of the new NSF-funded Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (SynBERC), which will unite researchers, industry and policy experts to drive advances in the emerging field of synthetic biology.
BART NAGEL PHOTO
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Funded by a five-year, $16-million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (SynBERC) was announced in August. It unites researchers in synthetic biology from five universities—Berkeley, MIT, Harvard, UCSF and Prairie View A&M University in Texas—for a unique “engineering” center. Prairie View is a small, historically black university included expressly to provide its faculty and students access to research in the fledgling field.
“The focus of SynBERC is to make biology easier to engineer,” says Berkeley ChemE and BioE professor Jay Keasling, director of the new center. Synthetic biology involves designing and constructing new biological entities such as enzymes, genetic circuits and cells, or redesigning existing biological systems specifically to treat disease and address pressing environmental problems.
SynBERC researchers hope to engineer microbes to produce the anticancer drugs
vincristine and vinblastine—currently used to treat lymphoma, leukemia, and some
types of breast and lung cancer—which today are extracted from plants and, because
of their chemical complexity, are difficult to synthesize in the laboratory.
Projects under way in Keasling’s Berkeley lab include a microbe that changes
the hard-to-digest cellulose of plants directly into fuel, and improving the bacteria and
yeast he has already engineered to produce the antimalarial drug artemisinin.
(See the spring 2005 Forefront cover story.)
The NSF grant includes several unique components, including an open source registry that will allow SynBERC engineers to share the designs for their biological parts and devices. Through industrial agreements, 12 firms have already committed to partnership with the center as investors and research advisors; in return, they will have access to student researchers and graduates. Members of the team will create synthetic biology curricula for K-12 and community college students, encouraging participation of minority and underrepresented students.
The center will also address the ethical implications of synthetic biology. “We are going to make biology easier to engineer, which means it will be easier for someone to misuse the technology,” Keasling says. SynBERC will bring social scientists and public policy experts into the synthetic biology discussion to consider the societal, ethical, biosecurity and biosafety implications.
The center was spearheaded by the California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research (QB3), a public-private partnership founded in 2000 that facilitates multidisciplinary research. At Berkeley, QB3 has made synthetic biology one of its key initiatives, so securing the NSF funding is a major milestone.
For more, go to www.synberc.org.
By Robert Sanders, UC Berkeley Media Relations |
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