Synthetic Biology

In future, synthetic biology could help speed up the development of new vaccines or offer advances in environmental remediation. It also has great potential for producing non-fossil fuels and could benefit biotechnology by, for example, bringing down the cost of producing new medicines or chemical products. Synthetic biology is of great strategic relevance to the Helmholtz Association's research mission. The aim of the initiative is to firmly establish synthetic biology as an emerging field in the life sciences in Germany and to make it internationally competitive.

Helmholtz Centres and universities develop innovative biological systems

The Helmholtz Synthetic Biology Initiative will fund Germany's first national research network in the field. Researchers from the Helmholtz Centres in Heidelberg, Karlsruhe, Jülich, Munich and Braunschweig are working closely with scientists from Heidelberg University and the University of Freiburg. The research programme includes technological resources and practical projects in the health and key technologies research fields. The new Helmholtz initiative will receive €3 million in funding from the Initiative and Networking Fund over the next few years. The participating institutions will also provide the same amount from their own budgets. The start-up phase, which has initially been funded until 2014, aims to lay the foundations for sustainable research structures. The idea is to then include these structures in the Helmholtz Association's programme-oriented funding and to continue using them as a cross-cutting topic in the health and key technologies research fields.Responsible research that takes society's ideas into account

Responsible research that takes society's ideas into account

Drew Endy from Stanford University gives a simple and pragmatic definition of the aim of synthetic biology: "Make biology easy to engineer" (www.openwetware.org/wiki/Endy:Research). In other words, it is about finding ways of using biology to build things. To do so, researchers connect biological building blocks (e.g. promoters and protein domains) to form more complex circuits, such as enzyme cascades and genetic circuits. These "biological devices" are then installed in existing organisms ("the chassis"), where they perform new functions. Recent far-reaching breakthroughs in synthetic biology include engineering the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to synthesise the antimalarial drug precursor artemisinic acid (Ro et al., 2006) and generating Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0, the world's first organism with a synthetic genome. The latter was achieved by Craig Venter and his research team (Gibson et al., 2010).

But although the field offers great potential, experts in Germany and abroad are increasingly discussing their concerns about the possible risks. They want to find ways to protect against the risk of misuse (biosecurity), against possible risks to human health and the environment (biosafety) and against socio-economic risks (König et al., 2012); there is also the matter of traditional ideas about life (Boldt and Müller, 2008). Therefore, a separate research project that will accompany the initiative has been tasked with addressing the ethical and social issues involved and with identifying how to develop and govern synthetic biology in a responsible way. The researchers working in the initiative want to develop a repository for biological parts (the Helmholtz Repository of BioParts, HeRBi) in order to strengthen the synthetic biology community. By providing a public database of new, standardised biological building blocks, it should be easier for synthetic biologists to use the "molecular toolbox" in the future.

The research scope of the initiative's technological resources includes projects in cancer research, virology, biosensors, enzymology, polymer chemistry, and mathematics. The idea is that the molecular building blocks and circuits developed in these projects will subsequently be used in practical interdisciplinary projects. For example, researchers from Heidelberg University and the Helmholtz-Zentrum München - German Research Center for Environmental Health are using naturally occurring viruses to develop new vehicles that can deliver targeted gene therapy. By combining surface proteins from various natural viral isolates with synthetic sequences, the researchers hope to make it possible to selectively treat individual tissue and cell types in, for example, cases of pancreatic cancer and viral infections.

Meanwhile, Forschungszentrum Jülich is developing modular synthetic enzyme cascades. The idea is that these will be installed in microbial cell factories and will allow us to do things like use alternative carbon and energy resources and synthesise optically active building blocks that can be used as pharmaceuticals, food supplements and fine chemicals. Researchers at the University of Freiburg are aiming to develop innovative biohybrid polymers. The work involves functionalising new materials with adjustable mechanical and biological properties by installing them with synthetic biological switches. Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) can then use them as 3D matrices for the targeted differentiation of neuronal stem cells.

Participating centres:

German Cancer Research Centre, Heidelberg

Prof Dr Roland Eils, Prof Dr Thomas Höfer

Forschungszentrum Jülich

Prof Dr Michael Bott, Prof Dr Andreas Offenhäusser, Prof Dr Wolfgang Wiechert

Karlsruher Institut für Technologie

Dipl-Pol Christopher Coenen, Prof Dr Armin Grunwald, Prof Dr Andreas Guber, Dr Harald König, Prof Dr Uwe Strähle

Helmholtz-Zentrum München

Prof Dr Ruth Brack-Werner, Prof Dr Ulrike Protzer

Helmholtz-Centre for Infection Research

Prof Dr Rolf Müller, Dr Dagmar Wirth

Partner universities:

Heidelberg University

Dr Dirk Grimm, Prof Dr Andres Jäschke

University of Freiburg

Prof Dr Wilfried Weber

Contacts and further information:

www.helmholtz.de/syntheticbiology

Prof Dr Roland Eils r.eils@dkfz.de

Dr Julia Ritzerfeld j.ritzerfeld@dkfz.de

"Synthetic Biology - from Understanding to Application"

international symposium on synthetic biology

09.-11.12.2013, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ)

Organizing Committee:

‒   Roland Eils (DKFZ)
‒   Stefan Bräse (HeiKa)
‒   Christopher Coenen (KIT)
‒   Kristian Köchy (BBAW)
‒   Harald König (KIT)
‒   Ulrike Protzer (HMGU)
‒   Michael Reth (BIOSS)
‒   Uwe Strähle (KIT)
‒   Wilfried Weber (Uni FR, BIOSS und NSB-Upper Rhine)
‒   Wolfgang Wiechert (FZJ und DECHEMA)
‒   Dagmar Wirth (HZI)

Co-Organizers:

‒   BIOSS – Centre for Signalling Studies, Universität Freiburg
‒   HeiKA – Heidelberg-Karlsruhe Research Partnership
‒   NSB-Upper Rhine – Upper Rhine network in Synthetic Biology
‒   BBAW – Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften
‒   DECHEMA – Gesellschaft für Chemische Technik und Biotechnologie