Synthetic Biology:Who we are

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We are a group of individuals, groups and labs from various institutions who are committed to engineering biology in an open and ethical manner.

We are currently working to

• help specify and populate a set of standard parts that have well-defined performance characteristics and can be used (and re-used) to build biological systems,
• develop and incorporate design methods and tools into an integrated engineering environment,
• reverse engineer and re-design pre-existing biological parts and devices in order to expand the set of functions that we can access and program,
• reverse engineer and re-design a 'simple' natural bacterium,
• minimize the genome of natural bacteria and build so-called protocells in the lab, to define the minimal requirements of living entities, and
• construct orthogonal biological systems, such as a genetic code with an enlarged alphabet of base pairs.

This site was originally started by a group of students, faculty and staff from MIT and Harvard. Currently, however, all those interested in Synthetic Biology are invited to contribute and maintain the http://syntheticbiology.org site. To edit the site, you must have an account on OpenWetWare. To obtain an account, visit how to join.

This site is hosted on OpenWetWare and can be edited by all members of the Synthetic Biology community.
Making life better, one part at a time.