A living foundry for Synthetic Biological Materials: A synthetic biology roadmap to new advanced materials

Abstract

Society is on the cusp of harnessing recent advances in synthetic biology to discover new bio-based products and routes to their affordable and sustainable manufacture. This is no more evident than in the discovery and manufacture of Synthetic Biological Materials, where synthetic biology has the capacity to usher in a new Materials from Biology era that will revolutionise the discovery and manufacture of innovative synthetic biological materials. These will encompass novel, smart, functionalised and hybrid materials for diverse applications whose discovery and routes to bio-production will be stimulated by the fusion of new technologies positioned across physical, digital and biological spheres. This article, which developed from an international workshop held in Manchester, United Kingdom, in 2017 [1], sets out to identify opportunities in the new materials from biology era. It considers requirements, early understanding and foresight of the challenges faced in delivering a Discovery to Manufacturing Pipeline for synthetic biological materials using synthetic biology approaches. This challenge spans the complete production cycle from intelligent and predictive design, fabrication, evaluation and production of synthetic biological materials to new ways of bringing these products to market. Pathway opportunities are identified that will help foster expertise sharing and infrastructure development to accelerate the delivery of a new generation of synthetic biological materials and the leveraging of existing investments in synthetic biology and advanced materials research to achieve this goal.

Biology in the 21st-Century: Transformation in biology science and education in supporting the sustainable development goals

“…This is alongside a need to establish early stage partnerships with industry to define unmet needs in advanced materials and to maintain continued engagement from early-stage discovery and development, through to manufacturing delivery and commercialization. Unification of these fields will create major opportunities for new materials discovery, their sustainable and affordable manufacture and application to unmet needs for industry (Le Feuvre & Scrutton, 2018). The Indonesian education system (see Figure 5) has to attend the needs of a large, growing, diverse and widely dispersed population with great disparity in enrolment rates between regions (Susanti, 2011).…”

Combination of versatile platforms for the development of synthetic biology

“…Despite of increasing sophisticated gene circuits, attaining complex tasks remains a big challenge for engineered cells themselves. For instance, although the engineered cells can develop a defined pattern from a single cell or a cell colony, it is still hard for cells to align themselves to assemble a functional material [34,35]. In another example, scientists have engineered cells with sensing and responding capability so they can release the therapeutics at a certain condition.…”

A Robust Strategy for Sustainable Organic Chemicals Utilizing Bioprivileged Molecules

“…The platform concept also created the basis for examining the integration of biological and chemical transformations . The concept of a synthetic biology foundry has been proposed by a number of groups with a nice summary recently presented . The strength of this strategy is the systematic utilization of rapidly expanding tools to engineer biology for the synthesis of a desirable chemical through an increasingly rapid iterative design, build, test, learn (DBTL) cycle.…”

“…[4,5] The concept of as ynthetic biology foundryh as been proposed by an umber of groups with a nice summary recently presented. [6] The strength of this strategy is the systematic utilization of rapidlye xpanding tools to engineer biology for the synthesis of ad esirable chemical through an increasingly rapid iterative design,b uild, test, learn (DBTL) cycle. The downside of the synthetic biology foundryi s that unlike the original development of the organic chemical industry,i ti si ntrinsically ar etrosynthetic strategy.…”