The IET and leading innovation and knowledge centre, SynbiCITE have teamed up to organise a free IET / SynbiCITE workshop on Engineering Biology.
Find out how synthetic biology is quickly evolving and accelerating towards amazing new frontiers in the field of life sciences and the potential applications extending broadly to span a range of sectors:
Manufacturing
Many companies work with synthetic biology (engineered biology) to create novel materials for the flavours and fragrances and fine chemicals industry, agriculture, nutrition and personal care industries.
Many of these are routes to solvent-free reactions that are faster, more efficient and environmentally friendly routes compared with current industrial chemical processes.
Healthcare
The possibilities for using synthetic biology to engineer more effective products and new diagnostics, drugs and therapeutics are developing rapidly; examples are hitting the headlines for potential solutions to global healthcare challenges such as malaria and zika, cancer, antibacterial resistance, and water contamination.
Defence industry
Synthetic biology could contribute to defence and security and UK’s Defence Science and Technologies Laboratories (DSTL) are investigating several possibilities including protection of personnel or equipment, sensor technologies to detect chemicals, biosensors to detect local changes in the environment, new materials for protective coatings and corrosion resistance and camouflage solutions.
Information and communications, robotics and automation
Cloud labs are enabling massive online experiments in engineering biology in a central lab from anywhere in the world.
Experiments are designed over the web using specialist software, are conducted using specified materials and data is managed into a database on the cloud which can be accessed and manipulated from anywhere and analysed using extensive data suites.
The outputs from these can be enormous data sets that need verification, modelling and simulation before translation into manufacturing-at-scale bioprocesses which are reproducible, robust and can be run on automated robotic platforms.
Transport
Engineering biology is being used to create biologically-based lightweight, very strong and environmentally-friendly manufactured materials which will have direct application in the aircraft and automotive industries.
Synthetic biology is being investigated as a route to producing environmentally-friendly coatings for ships’ hulls to prevent barnacles from sticking and to reduce salt water corrosion.
Built environment and future cities
New materials are being investigated whereby cracks in concrete self-repair using synthetic biology engineered natural bacteria that are mixed in the concrete prior to use.
This also has potential to make a ‘bio-grout’ to inject into cracks in traditional cement based concrete whereby the grout biomineralises, grows and fills the crack.
New water filtration and waste management process are being developed to enable the re-use of grey water, manufacturing waste and domestic waste by converting this using engineering biology approaches to create energy and new materials.
Find out more