SynBERC - Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center 

The Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (SynBERC) is a multi-institution research effort to lay the foundation for the emerging field of synthetic biology . SynBERC’s vision is to catalyze biology ... as an engineering discipline by developing the foundational understanding and technologies to allow researchers to design and build standardized, integrated biological systems to accomplish many particular tasks. Just as technicians can now assemble standardized, off-the-shelf electronic components to build computers, synthetic biologists foresee a day when engineers will assemble well-characterized biological components into robust host organisms to achieve specific functions, such as convert biomass into biofuels, or cheaply produce drugs to fight disease, or detect and destroy biochemical agents. The richness and versatility of biological systems make them ideally suited to solve such challenges. But despite great progress in engineering microorganisms, significant challenges per   [More...] [Less...]