1. … a few words about
Synthetic Biology

2. Outline … The vision of Synthetic Biology
… Foundations of engineering biology
… PoPS and Standard Assembly

3. Biology is a Technology
Not only analyze, construct & evaluate new systems!
Many applications…

4. Engineering Biology? Problems: … slow … expensive … unreliable
Please complete one of the following projects in the next hour:
- Write down the DNA sequence that encodes a ring oscillator that works inside yeast;
Write down the DNA sequence that programmes any mammalian cell to count up to 256 in response to a generic input signal;
Write down the DNA sequence that programmes any prokaryote to produce 25 g l21 artemisinic acid.
Problems:
… slow
… expensive
… unreliable
… ad-hoc
Don’t know enough?
Too complex?
… or both?
“The engineering of biology remains complex because we’ve never made it simple!” (T. F. Knight)

5. Synthetic Biology Attempt to make it simple. Synthetic Biology:
An engineering technology based on living systems
Interdisciplinary…

6. Foundations … construct a building?
Limited set of predefined materials that behave as expected
Generally usefull rules (simple models) of how to combine the materials
Skilled individuals, experts

7. Challenges … manage complexity
… unreliable construction and characterization
… spontaneous physical variation of system behaviour
… evolution

8. How to address challenges?
… Standardization
… Decoupling
… Abstraction

9. Standardization
… Standards
… Development of techniques

10. Decoupling
… Complex Problem: What to do?
… Design and Fabrication

11. Abstraction
… hide information
… manage complexity

12. PoPS

13. Standard Assembly restriction sites for EcoRI, XbaI, SpeI, and PstI
antibiotic resistance gene