Fostering Synthetic Biology standardisation through international collaboration

Fostering Synthetic Biology standardisation through international collaboration

Synthetic Biology is an engineering research field aiming at (re)designing biological circuits for applied purposes. As any other engineering field, it strongly relies on the use of well-defined, universal and robust standard components. The outstanding success of synthetic biology in the last years should not hide the difficulties in defining biological standards. There are both historical and technical difficulties to reach that ambitious goal. On the former: the crossroad nature of synthetic biology involving mainly biologists/biotechnologists and engineers, whose views on the standardisation of living beings tend to differ; among the latter: the intrinsic features of live (mutation, emergent properties, fitness biasses, variability and, of course, evolution). In BIOROBOOST we propose to finally overcome cultural issues and to dramatically advance in solving technical difficulties by i) gathering the most relevant stakeholders of all the aspects of standardisation in biology in Europe in a co-creation scenario; ii) by empirically testing cultural (lab-centric) standardisation practices and by promoting a consensus conceptual and technical redefinition of biological standards; and, finally, iii) by fostering a realistic and flexible toolbox of standard biological parts, including a reduced set of specialised chassis for specific applications as well as a renewed conceptual framework to inform policy makers, scientific and other societal actors.