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

不断上涨的油价、供应安全和对气候变化的担忧，正迫使我们对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进行重大反思。植物产品显然是目前和未来化学品和材料的替代来源，但在许多情况下，与合成产品相比，其应用和性能特征更加有限。因此，如果我们从长远来看，将植物生产的可持续性与合成化学的易处理性结合起来，生产用于工业生产的新一代“智能”可再生化学品和材料将是非常可取的。新兴的合成生物学科学，可以应用工程和物理科学原理来合理控制新陈代谢，这为生产新的基于生物的产品提供了非常强大的手段，包括来自植物的智能材料。在我们的网络SPPI-Net中，我们建议将英国现有的植物新陈代谢专业知识与化学家和工程师结合起来，在植物中设计新的新陈代谢过程，从而产生新的工业合成植物产品(SPPI)。SPPI的未来应用范围从可再生的生物聚合物到新型精细化学品和药物。SPPI-Net在与工业家密切合作开发产品方面将有非常实用的目标，这将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。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方面的新项目来实现。作为网络的一部分，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些新的突破性技术的看法。

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.