From Biology to Technology

Synbio MashUp #12

The Synthetic Biology Mashup is a weekly review of articles and news related to synthetic biology and metabolic engineering. While we share most of this on our twitter feed, if you need to catch up on this week’s news just read ahead!

Immunity Project Receives Support from Y Combinator for Free HIV Vaccine Development

The technology accelerator Y Combinator has provided financial support to a new pharmaceutical company focussed on developing an inhalable vaccine against HIV called Immunity Project. Studying people presenting a natural resistance to the virus, the company has identified critical amino acids in the virus to target with a vaccine. Immunity Project aims to make the vaccine available free world-wide and is using crowdfunding, instead of firm investments, in order to raise the necessary $482,000 to complete the animal trials.

First Kit to Detect the Majority of Commercialized GMOs

Amidst the Genetically Modified (GM) food debate, scientists from Shanghai Jiao Tong University created the first kit to detect the vast majority of commercialized GMOs in a single test. The MACRO (Multiplex Amplification on a Chip with Readout on an Oligo microarray) system covers 97% of all GM events that have been commercialized up to 2012, with high specificity and high throughput. With apprehensive customers and regulatory bodies we can expect to see more of these kits in the near future.

Renewable Energy Group Continues to Grow with the Acquisition of LS9

The U.S.’s largest biodiesel producer, Renewable Energy Group (REG), announced that it will acquire the synthetic biology company LS9 (now called REG Life Sciences) for up to $ 61.5 million assuming a certain number of milestones are reached. LS9 premier product is its UltraCleanTM Diesel which they produce from feedstock using synthetic biology tools. The company has been struggling lately with a number of scale-up challenges and with raising capital. REG has now quite a diverse product portfolio from first-generation biodiesel and heating oil, all the way to advanced biofuel recently with the acquisition of Syntroleum and now with LS9. Make sure to read the interesting column in the Motley Fool.
That’s it for this week’s Synthetic Biology Mashup! A suggestion or a question? Shoot us an email!

Synbio MashUp #11

The Synthetic Biology mashup is a weekly review of articles and pieces of news related to synthetic biology. While we share most of this on our twitter feed, if you need to catch up on this week’s headlines just read on!

SynBio Consulting at Peptalk 2014

SynBio Consulting gave an opening keynote introducing Synthetic Biology last week in Palm Springs at the PepTalk Conference organised by Cambridge Healthtech. The program addressed various antibody-related topics through talks, seminars and short courses.  SynBio Consulting also had a booth where we showcased recent and upcoming projects.

Illumina wins the $1000 human genome sequence race

Illumina announced at the J.P. Morgan Annual Healthcare Conference this week the achievement of a human-specific high-end sequencer able to sequence a human genome for less than $1000. While the advantages of this low-cost tool for personalised medicine and understanding natural genetic variation are indisputable, the cost of the machine starting from $10 million and sold only in systems of 10 could be an obstacle.

Nanoreactors mimicking basic eukaryotic cell processes created

Researchers at the Radboud University Nijmegen, in the Netherlands, created nanoreactors mimicking basic eukaryotic cell processes. The multi-compartmentalized nano-structure was made using a droplet of water as the foundation, the “organelles” were engineered by injecting tailored enzymes into polymer nano-spheres and a polymer-based cellular wall was used to encapsulate them. The nanoreactor was able to perform enzymatic reaction cascades spamming across the multiple compartments. “What I cannot create, I do not understand” said Feynman, this synthetic cell promises to be an interesting platform to question many basic cellular processes.

Alternative Plant Phenylalanine Pathway Discovered at Purdue University opening a host of new metabolic engineering possibilities

Purdue University researchers published an article this week in Nature explaining how they discovered an alternative pathway in plants that produces phenylalanine, one of the twenty amino acids of living organisms, in a microbial-like way. It uses phenylpyruvate and converts it to phenylalanine by taking a nitrogen group from tyrosine, under relaxed regulation. This opens new possibilities for metabolic engineering to synthesize phenylalanine, which could help improve plants’ defence, serve as a base for cancer-treating drugs and yield more nutritional foods. Read more here

Towards new sustainable source of Omega-3 Fatty acids using bacteria

A team led by Rolf Muller at Saarland University in Germany identified a species of slime bacteria producing omega-3 long-chain PolyUnsaturated Fatty Acids (PUFAs). Two distinct PUFA pathways were identified differing greatly from those found in marine organisms.Sorangium cellulosum that can make linoleic acid and the new-found Aetherobacter that can make eicosapentaenoic and docosahexaenoic acids. In this paper, scientists took the genes and transferred them into Myxococcus xanthus, a fast growing model strain, opening the door to the metabolic engineering for industrial production of chemical. This finding came out in the same time with the announcement of Rothamsted Research to develop plants producing omega-3 fatty acids which we featured in last week’s mashup

New Berkeley project on the Conversion of Methane to Liquid Transportation Fuel

Christer Jansson’s lab at Berkeley is working on optimizing an enzyme to efficiently convert the abundant supply of methane from wastewater treatments and landfills to liquid transportation fuel. Methanotrophs can gobble up methane but their enzymes are not efficient enough to make transportation fuels a reality. Instead, the scientist are engineering a different enzyme, very well understood, and that ordinarly takes in carbon dioxide, making it an ideal platform to tinker with Various divisions of the university are set to participate in this project with Novici Biotech, Kiverdi Inc. and Microvi Biotechnologies as industrial partners.

More Synthetic Biology in the Media this Week

The Independent had an interesting article about the University College London-based startupSynthace, the first Contract Research Organization in the UK specialised in the engineering of new biological production systems using Synthetic Biology tools. The article also featured the iGEM competition and other issues related to synthetic biology. The MotleyFool published an interesting article  listing 5 technologies made possible by Synthetic Biology and highlights the possible applications and implications of these. These 5 “unbelievable but true” technologies are microbial factories for everyday products, biosensors for food pathogens, marijuana without the plant, fixing your genes to cure diseases and plants that produce their own nitrogen fertilisers.

That’s it for this week’s Synthetic Biology Mashup! A suggestion or a question? Shoot us an email.

Synbio Mashup – 01/13/14

The Synthetic Biology mashup is a weekly review of articles and pieces of news related to synthetic biology. While we share most of this on our twitter feed, if you need to catch up on this week’s headlines just read on!

Glow-in-the-Dark Plants to be Commercially Produced by Bioglow

American biotechnology company Bioglow used synthetic biology processes to develop ornamental glowing plants named Starlight Avatar. These plants express genes from luminescent bacteria and do not require any external stimuli to glow. An online auction is due to take place in late January to buy the first ones. This announcement comes after last yzar successful “Glowing Plant” kickstarter campaign which raised $485000.

A look at AquaBounty’s genetically engineered AquAdvantage Salmon

This week the MotleyFool published an interesting article on AquaBounty Technologies, now owned by Intrexon, highlighting their latest products and the possible safety concerns. Aquabounty has developed a genetically engineered Atlantic salmon, the AquAdvantage Salmon, maturing twice as fast as conventional ones thanks to the introduction of a single gene from a Pacific Chinook salmon. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration declared them to be safe to for human consumption back in 2010. AquAdvantage Salmons should be ready for commercialisation next year, potentially opening the regulatory doors for engineering other types of fish.

Robust Synthetic Genetic Clock Built to Withstand Changes in Temperature

Scientists at Rice University and the University of Houston published an article shedding a new light on the complex genetic regulations behind living organisms’ adjustment to changing temperatures. Matthew Bennett and his team developed a robust synthetic genetic clock to allow Escherichia coli bacteria to accurately keep time in a wide temperature range. Temperature normally affects biochemistry, the warmer the condition, the faster enzymes work. However a lot of living organisms manage to keep their circadian rhythm constant, through a combination of smart architecture and temperature-sensitive proteins. Matthew Bennett and his team managed to reproduce similar behaviours while developing an interesting new tool for synthetic biology.

New Synthetic Biology graduate programs opening around the UK

These new EPSRC Centres for Doctoral Training in Synthetic Biology are jointly supported by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and will open at the Universities of Oxford, Bristol and Warwick. Applications are already open.

That’s it for this week’s Synthetic Biology Mashup! A suggestion or a question? Shoot us an email.