Bridging the gap between the lab bench and industry to speed up the development of new biotechnological products.
In Synthetic Biology novel biological functionality is developed using sound computational and engineering principles in order to add new properties to a given organism – called a host or chassis. The type of chassis used will vary according to the application and the circuit.
However, currently, most research innovations are designed for, and tested in, model organisms such as the commonly used bacteria Escherichia coli or Bacillus Subtilis.
Moving these circuits to another organism requires the circuit to be re-engineered and re-tested, a process which is very time consuming and costly. This process of ‘re-coding’ slows down research and costs industry a huge amount of time, effort and money.
Please have a look at our new state-of-the-art ICOS research labs in the Devonshire building at Newcastle University: