SPPI-NET: a Network for Synthetic Plant Products for Industry

油价上涨、供应安全和对气候变化的担忧迫使我们重新思考如何从依赖化石燃料的工业体系转向使用可持续、可再生原料的工业体系。植物产品是当前和未来的化学品和材料的明显替代来源，但在许多情况下，与合成产品相比，其应用和性能特征更为有限。因此，如果我们从长远来看，在生产用于工业生产的新一代“智能”可再生化学品和材料时，将基于植物的生产的可持续性与合成化学的易处理性结合联合收割机将是非常可取的。新兴的合成生物学科学，即工程和物理科学原理可以应用于合理控制新陈代谢，为生产新的生物基产品提供了一种非常强大的手段，包括来自植物的智能材料。在我们的网络中，SPPI-NET，我们建议将英国可用的植物代谢方面的专业知识与化学家和工程师组装在一起，以设计植物中新的代谢过程，从而产生新的工业合成植物产品（SPPIs）。SPPI的未来应用范围从可再生生物聚合物到新型精细化学品和药物。SPPI-NET将与工业家密切合作，开发对英国化学工业的长期可持续性和未来竞争力产生重大影响的产品。这将通过建立训练有素的科学家社区和促进基础和应用植物合成生物学的新项目来实现。作为该网络的一部分，我们还将考虑合成生物学的发展如何影响社会和公众对这种新的激进技术的看法。

Increasing oil-prices, security of supply and concerns over climate change are forcing a major re-think in how we can move from an industrial system reliant on fossil fuels to one which uses sustainable, renewable feed-stocks. Plant products are an obvious alternative current and future source of chemicals and materials, but in many cases are more limited in their applications and performance characteristics as compared with their synthetic counterparts. If we take a long term view, it would therefore be very desirable to combine the sustainability of plant based production with the tractability of synthetic chemistry in producing new generations of 'smart' renewable chemicals and materials for industrial production. The emerging science of synthetic biology, whereby engineering and physical science principles could be applied to rationally control metabolism presents a very powerful means of generating new bio-based products, including smart materials from plants. In our network, SPPI-NET, we propose to assemble the appreciable expertise in plant metabolism available in the UK with chemists and engineers to design new metabolic processes in plants which will give rise to novel Synthetic Plant Products for Industry (SPPIs). Future applications for SPPIs range from renewable biopolymers to novel fine chemicals and drugs. SPPI-NET will have very applied goals in working closely with industrialists on products which will make a significant impact on the long-term sustainability and future competitiveness of the UK's chemical industry. This will be achieved through building a community of trained scientists and fostering novel projects in basic and applied plant synthetic biology. As part of the network, we will also consider how the development of synthetic biology could impact on society and the public's perception of such new radical technologies.