[img_assist|nid=4601|title=|desc=In previous research, Rice synthetic biologist Jeff Tabor and colleagues created colonies of light-sensitive bacteria that exhibited complex patterns when exposed to images, like this portrait of Albert Einstein.

SynBERC researchers at Harvard are a step closer to engineering new "words" in the DNA language of bacteria by co-opting one of the codons in its genetic code to give it new meaning. In the July 15 2011 edition of Science, George Church's group describes its genome engineering technologies that are capable of fundamentally reengineering genomes by expanding the number of DNA codons it can read.

Small-molecule regulation of gene expression is intrinsic to cellular function and indispensable to the construction of new biological sensing, control and expression systems. However, there are currently only a handful of strategies for engineering such regulatory components and fewer still that can give rise to an arbitrarily large set of inducible systems whose members respond to different small molecules, display uniformity and modularity in their mechanisms of regulation, and combine to actuate universal logics.

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Dow Agrosciences Summer R&D Intern Program (posted 10-21-2011)

A web of Federal laws and guidelines regulates the engineering of biology. With authors Rocco Casagrande and Jennifer Byers of Gryphon Scientific, SynBERC Human Practices researcher Kenneth Oye has helped assemble a practical guide to synthetic biology regulations for academic and industry researchers that explains how the various regulations pertain to our daily research activities.

The Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (SynBERC) is a multi-institution research effort to lay the foundation for the emerging field of synthetic biology. SynBERC’s vision is to catalyze biology as an engineering discipline by developing the foundational understanding and technologies to allow researchers to design and build standardized, integrated biological systems to accomplish many particular tasks.

What is a SynBERC Affiliated Investigator?

Prairie View A&M University and the SynBERC Student Leadership Council hosted the second Synthetic Biology Symposium on Friday, November 5, 2010, at the Willie A. Templeton Sr. Memorial Student Center on the Prairie View A&M University campus.

Synthetic biology is an exciting new field of research that combines classic molecular biology and innovative bioengineering techniques. It focuses on the design and construction of new biological entities, such as enzymes, genetic circuits, and cells, and on the redesign of existing biological systems.

The Yeast Synthetic Biology Workshop took place on Saturday October 16, 2010 at UC San Francisco's Genentech Hall. Generously supported by Life Technologies, this one-day workshop was in response to a growing recognition that yeast is re-emerging as an important workhorse system in synthetic biology research-development-production processes, in particular for chemical production and biofuels applications.