Synthetic Cellular Systems: At the interface between systems and synthetic biology
Systems & Synthetic Biology
The terminology change in the early 90’s from ‘molecular biology’ to ‘molecular systems biology’ reflected a novel holistic way of thinking: by means of high throughput technologies, understanding complex biological phenomena in their entirety became feasible. Similarly, the more recent change from ‘genetic engineering/biotechnology’ to ‘synthetic biology’ is based on a novel mind set: the idea of rational design. Synthetic biology, driven by the insights gained through systems biology exploits the modularity of biological systems, relies on the identification, reuse or adaptation of existing parts of systems to construct novel systems tailored to a specific aim.
A systems understanding of basic biological design principles and global cellular behavior will help further rationalizing the design principles in systems biology and better understand the concepts of ‘orthogonality’ and ‘evolutionary stability’ that are key to successful synthetic biology. The large number of experimental observations on synthetically designed circuits will, when subjected to systems approaches, contribute to a better fundamental understanding.
Synthetic Cellular Systems
SYNCELLS is a Scientific Research Network of the Research Foundation-Flanders situated at the interface between systems and synthetic biology. It aims at bringing together experts in systems and synthetic biology around a number of well defined research topics. By means of workshops and meetings expertise between both fields will be exchanged and a road map will be set out to outline future challenges and potential future collaborations.