UC Berkeley students are among the many undergraduate researchers who are pioneering the field of synthetic biology. In this video, the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism follows Jennifer Brophy for the summer through the International Genetically Engineered Machines competition — better known as iGEM — for a closer look at the iGEM experience.

SynBERC investigator Chris Voigt and a group of graduate students from his lab took a leap forward in the pursuit of chemicals derived not from petroleum but from renewable sources. The chemical target was methyl halides, a chemical precursor to several high-value chemicals, and which the oil industry already knows how to derive gasoline from.

A team of researchers from SynBERC, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), and biotech firm LS9 has developed a microbe that can produce an advanced biofuel directly from biomass. Deploying the tools of synthetic biology, the researchers engineered a strain of Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria to produce biodiesel fuel and other important chemicals derived from fatty acids.

Graduate students Jeffrey Dietrich, Howard Chou, and Eric Steen from the Keasling lab, as well as Angela Won from the Lim lab, participated in the 2009 Idea to IPO class offered by the Center for BioEntrepreneurship at the University of California San Francisco.

SynBERC, in partnership with the Joint BioEnergy Institute, was honored to host Dr. Sydney Brenner for a special lunchtime seminar and discussion on the role of synthetic biology in bioenergy production, biosynthetic therapeutics, and other areas of social importance.

Synthetic biology is the design and construction of new biological entities such as enzymes, genetic circuits, and cells or the redesign of existing biological systems. Synthetic biology builds on the advances in molecular, cell, and systems biology and seeks to transform biology in the same way that synthesis transformed chemistry and integrated circuit design transformed computing.