BGI & University of Manchester to Collaborate on Synthetic Biology Project
Synthetic biology aims to design, engineer or replicate biological systems, for example, biosynthetic insulin, which first went on sale in 1982. Seventy percent of the insulin sold worldwide is produced in this way.
In an attempt to help address major global challenges such as producing low-carbon fuel, reducing the cost of industrial raw materials and producing new pharmaceuticals, BGI and the University of Manchester have launched a five-year collaboration focused on synthetic biology and metabolic engineering.
The collaboration will draw upon the work of Yizhi (Patrick) Cai, Ph.D., chair in synthetic genomics at the University of Manchester, whose lab is involved with the Synthetic Yeast Genome Project (Sc2.0), which aims to redesign and synthesize a 12-Mb designer yeast genome de novo.
“For the collaboration, researchers from both sides intend to start with the Sc2.0 synthetic yeast as a tool to establish the workflow for high efficient construction and characterization of biosynthesis pathways of natural products, and will gradually be extended to industrial strains,” BGI spokeswoman Kristi Heim said.
The collaboration aligns with China’s decade-old interest in advancing synthetic biology. The announcement cited the potential for synthetic biology to provide “profitable opportunities in a wide range of areas including biomanufacturing, pharmacology, energy, environment, and agriculture.
”“We are faced with both challenges and opportunities in the rising tide of synthetic biology,” BGI chairman Huanming (Henry) Yang, Ph.D., said in a statement. “We should encourage multiparty collaboration to overcome obstacles and discover new potentials.”
In the statement, Xun Xu, Ph.D., director of BGI Research and executive director of China National GeneBank (CNGB), cited one example of a biomanufacturing challenge: “Natural products like artemisinin have generated tremendous value in improving people’s health, but there are still considerable issues to be resolved.”
Biomanufacturing will be another area of focus for BGI’s collaboration with the University of Manchester.
“Our collaboration will be focused on addressing the upstream process, which is biology-driven and remains underexplored due to our limited knowledge of cells and the metabolic pathways of natural products from various resources,” Heim said. “In our collaboration, we will bring the strengths from both sides on high throughput and automated Omics-level analysis and characterization to streamline and improve the efficiency of upstream processing workflow.“
