Engineered security systems for environmental synthetic biology

环境合成生物学工程安全系统

• 批准号: BB/J019720/1
• 负责人: Thomas Ellis
• 金额: $ 15.3万
• 依托单位: Imperial College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2012 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=BB%2FJ019720%2F1
• 关键词: Engineered; security; systems; environmental; synthetic

This research seeks to provide crucial parts needed to advance the exciting new topic of synthetic biology in order to safely and securely realise biotechnology applications for health, environment and energy needs. Since 2000, the new field of synthetic biology has advanced the existing science of genetic modification by applying principles of engineering; design, simulation and testing. This approach has allowed us to predictably create exciting new technologies by modifying safe microbes to perform new tasks including computation, multi-input environmental sensing and efficient production of medicinal drugs and bioenergy. While research success in synthetic biology has been rapid, the transfer of this work into real applications used by society has been limited; we can build excellent cell biosensors for explosives, arsenic and other environmental pollutants but none have actually been put to use. Largely this is because synthetic biology creates genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and these are a regulatory hazard to deploy. The major concern is that engineered DNA of these GMOs will be transferred to natural microbes by a process called horizontal gene transfer (HGT) and that this will disrupt natural ecosystems. This concern is particularly apt when we work with bacteria such as E. coli, as in these organisms synthetic biologists typically engineer their systems to be maintained on DNA circles called plasmids, which are easy to work with but also rapidly shared among bacteria and usually confer resistance to antibiotics. To overcome this hurdle and allow safe application of synthetic biology in the environment, this research aims to use synthetic biology techniques to construct a new kind of plasmid system that is secured to the intended cell, does not confer antibiotic resistance and resists horizontal gene transfer into natural bacteria. The development of this will include an assay to measure HGT and a model simulation to predict the key factors involved.

这项研究旨在提供所需的关键部分，以推进综合生物学的令人兴奋的新主题，以便安全安全地实现生物技术对健康，环境和能源需求的应用。自2000年以来，合成生物学的新领域通过应用工程学原理来推动现有的遗传修饰科学。设计，模拟和测试。这种方法使我们能够通过修改安全的微生物来执行新任务，包括计算，多输入环境感应以及有效的药物药物和生物能源生产，从而创造出令人兴奋的新技术。尽管合成生物学方面的研究成功率很快，但将这项工作转移到社会使用的实际应用中是有限的。我们可以为炸药，砷和其他环境污染物建造出色的细胞生物传感器，但实际上没有使用。这在很大程度上是因为合成生物学会产生转基因的生物（GMO），而这些生物学是部署的调节危害。主要问题是，这些转基因生物的工程DNA将通过称为水平基因转移（HGT）的过程转移到天然微生物中，这将破坏自然生态系统。当我们与细菌（例如大肠杆菌）合作时，这种关注尤其恰当，就像在这些生物体中，合成生物学家通常会在称为质粒的DNA圆圈上设计其系统，这些质粒易于使用，但在细菌中且通常在细菌中迅速共享，并且通常对抗生素进行抗性。为了克服这一障碍并允许在环境中安全地应用合成生物学，该研究旨在使用合成生物学技术来构建一种新型的质粒系统，该系统可保护为预期的细胞，不赋予抗生素耐药性并抗拒水平基因转移到自然细菌中。这将包括测量HGT和模型模拟的测定法，以预测所涉及的关键因素。

项目成果

Building-in biosafety for synthetic biology.

• DOI: 10.1099/mic.0.066308-0
• 发表时间: 2013-07
• 期刊: Microbiology
• 影响因子: 1.5
• 作者: O. Wright;G. Stan;T. Ellis