| The Synthetic Biology Engineering
Research Center (SynBERC), funded by NSF and headquartered at the University
of California, Berkeley, seeks to develop the foundational understanding
and technologies for the emerging field of synthetic biology, the goal
of which is to engineer standardized, integrated biological systems to
accomplish many novel tasks. SynBERC researchers have recently developed
a registry of the parts used to build these biological systems, along with
computational tools for synthetic biology.
Led by Massachusetts Institute
of Technology’s Drew Endy, Tom Knight, and Randy Rettberg, SynBERC developed
the Registry of Standard Biological Parts (http://partsregistry.org/Main_Page),
which records and indexes biological parts and offers synthesis and assembly
services to construct new parts, devices, and systems,. SynBERC Director
Jay Keasling led the development of a complementary registry in the Joint
BioEnergy Institute that will serve as the first node in the Web of Registries.
ERC members also developed
several important tools, including: tools and network for the Biological
Simulation Program for Intra- and Inter-Cellular Evaluation (Bio-SPICE),
an ongoing project to develop tools for simulating and analyzing natural
and designed biological networks, led by SynBERC researcher Adam Arkin;
the mapping of analog asynchronous network for use with biological networks,
also by Arkin; and the development of data analysis that discovers the
drug mechanism of actions from measurements of yeast haplo-insufficiency
trials, by Arkin.
These registries and tools
are part of SynBERC’s ground-breaking work in the development of synthetic
biology as a new engineering discipline. |
