Team:Heidelberg/Project Introduction

Introduction

Synthetic Biology is the engineering of Biology[1]. It attempts to make the construction of novel biological entities easier by introducing engineering concepts such as standardization, decoupling and abstraction[2]. Standardization refers to the introduction of shared units ([3],[5]) and DNA standards[4]. Decoupling means splitting up complex problems into simpler ones and can best be realized by introducing an abstraction hierarchy, ranging from "Parts" [2] (DNA, genes and proteins) and "devices" (a number of parts combined to process inputs to a functional output [6]) to "modules" (a set of interconnected devices that performs complex tasks [7]). Parts, devices and eventually modules would ideally be made freely available from a central registry. The Registry of Standard Biological Parts (http://www.partsregistry.org/) is an early implementation of such a collection of parts. Many parts in the registry are constructed from teams participating at iGEM([8],[9]), the world's premiere student competition in synthetic biology & biotechnology.

A further lesson learned from engineering is that the only efficient way to construct systems of high complexity (such as computers or airplanes) is simulating these systems on the computer prior to construction[7]. The construction of systems behaving predictably is indeed possible in biology, as two impressive publications demonstrate: Basu et al. |[10] show that programmed patterns can be formed by bacteria with transcriptional repressors of different strength at hand. Very recently, Ellis et al. [11] built scalable timers in yeast from a library of promoters of different strength. For systems to behave predictably, it is an obvious requirement to have well-characterized parts and devices at hand. A very high standard for device characterization has been proposed [12], but most registry entries remain uncharacterized.

The majority of the teams uses E. coli as chassis. Concerning eukaryotes within the iGEM competition most projects focused on yeast as chassis. There are very few teams which actually worked with mammalian cells. One of them was the Slovenia team of 2006 whose chassis was the human embryonal kidney cell line HEK293. Apart from iGEM there are a few labs that are concerned with synthetic biology in mammals. Research was focused on regulatory cascades, epigenetic toggle switches and even entire ecosystems with synthetic intra- and interspecies crosstalk [13]. However, this cannot be sufficient for the standardized work of the iGEM community. This is our motivation to establish new standards for the future work in this field. In comparison to Slovenia’s application-oriented project we decided to approach the issue of mammalian synthetic biology systematically by starting with the development of a well-characterized promoter library.

References

[1] "Synthetic Biology. Applying Engineering to Biology". Report of a NEST High-Level Expert Group. European Commission, Directorate-General for Research. Available online at http://www.synbiosafe.eu/uploads///pdf/EU-highlevel-syntheticbiology.pdf

[2] Endy, D. in Nature 438, pp. 449-453: „Foundations for engineering biology“

[3] Endy, D. et al. in Nature 438 (2005), p. 449-453: "Adventures in synthetic biology" (comic). Available online at nature.com

[4] http://www.partsregistry.org/Assembly:Standard_assembly (Website, accessed 10/15/2009)

[5] Kelly, JR et al in Journal of Biological Engineering 3 (2009): "Measuring the activity of BioBrick promoters using an in vivo reference standard"

[6] Voigt, C in Current Opinion in Biotechnology 17, pp. 548–557: „Genetic parts to program bacteria“

[7] Andianantoandro, E. Et al in Molecular Systems Biology 2006.0028: „Synthetic biology: new engineering rules for an emerging discipline“

[8] https://2009.igem.org/About (Website, accessed 10/15/2009)

[9] Goodman, C. in Nat Chem Biol. 2008 4, p. 13. "Engineering ingenuity at iGEM"

[10] Basu, S. in Nautre 434, pp. 1130-1133: „A synthetic multicellular system for programmed pattern formation“

[11] Ellis, T. et al. Diversity-based, model-guided construction of synthetic gene networks with predicted functions. Nature Biotechnology 27, 465-471 (2009)

[12] Canton, B. et al in Nature Biotechnology 26, pp.787-793: „Refinement and standardization of synthetic biological parts and devices“

[13] Weber, W. & Fussenegger, M. Engineering of Synthetic Mammalian Gene Networks. Chemistry and Biology 16: 287-297 (2009)