Tag: Synthetic Biology

In part III of the blog series looking at future directions in Plant Synthetic Biology, I caught up with members of the Earlham DNA Foundry to find out about how anyone in research might benefit from a Foundry as well as careers in managing facilities and requirements for wet-lab positions. A…

This post is part of a series looking at careers in Plant Synthetic Biology leading up to the 1st ASPB Plant SynBio meeting on the 7-9 Aug 2019, in San Jose CA. Follow the PlantSynbio2019 Twitter account for updates about the event. Looking back 200 years in time to the Northwest…

In part II of the series looking at careers in Plant Synthetic Biology I reached out to Valentin Zulkower who works as the Software Manager of the Edinburgh Genome Foundry (EGF), Scotland, UK, to find out about computational jobs. In what ways can computational biologists contribute to synthetic…

Evidence suggests that crop breeding programs have not optimized photosynthesis making it an attractive target for improvement. The last few years have been an exciting time for photosynthesis research with several groundbreaking studies that have afforded huge advances in both our understanding of…

I feel guilty about using plastics but it’s hard to break free; they are so integral to a modern lifestyle. However, the problem of plastic pollution is frightening. About 80% of manufactured plastic ends up in landfills or the natural environment. It's appalling to learn that the "Great Pacific Garbage…

Rubisco uses CO2 from the air to carboxylate its substrate RuBP, resulting in an increase in fixed carbon.  However, rubisco can also oxygenate RuBP and this leads to the production of glycolate. Plants must invest energy in recycling this toxic by-product in a process called photorespiration, resulting…

As photosynthetic organisms, plants are desirable and potentially cost-effective chassis for the production of novel compounds, but they are also inherently metabolically complex. Synthetic metabolic pathways can also improve upon nature by making plants more metabolically efficient. Küken and Nikoloski…

Synechococcus elongates UTEX 2973 (also known as Synechococcus 2973) has the fastest doubling time of known cyanobacteria, completely replicating itself in just over two hours. This fast growth rate makes it an interesting platform for industrial applications. Hendry et al set out to understand what…