Synthetic Biology at University of California at Berkeley and SynBERC: construction of novel microbial producers of biofuels and medicines

Synthetic Biology is a newengineering discipline, which takes advantage of the genetic and biological information rapidly accumulating in the post-genomic era. Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) is a research centre founded by the US Department of Energy. Its major goal is to develop new technologies to convert cellulose biomass into fuel using a variety of approaches, many of which are based on engineering of microorganisms by means of Synthetic Biology. JBEI hosts a Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (SynBERC) and a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. SynBERC brings together research groups from top US universities (Berkeley, Harvard, UCSF, Stanford, MIT etc), and has a mission to develop principles, tools and technologies for engineering b iological systems with predictable outcome. My group at NTNU is working in the field biosynthetic engineering of microorganisms, has been involved in research on biodegradation of oil, and recently initiated genome sequencing and analysis of several marin e bacteria isolated through bioprospecting. Application of Synthetic Biology principles to this kind of research would open completely new possibilities. Planned stay at SynBERC/Lawrence Lab at JBEI is aimed at my participation in the projects on biofules and "microbial drug factories", with possibility to develop a new collaborative research in this area. Theoretical and practical experience gained during the stay shall open new possibilities for synthetic biology-based projects in Norway.