MSc Biotechnology and Enterprise / Course details

Central dogma of molecular biology

Concepts of SynBio and DBTL cycle

Key methods of industrial biotechnology (e.g., microbial molecular biology; DNA synthesis methods; State-of-art gene and genome assembly; directed enzyme evolution; modern DNA sequencing methods; metabolomics and transcriptome profiling; metabolic modelling; chassis engineering; and/ or molecular profile analysis)

Modern applications of SynBio (e.g., biofuels, high-value chemicals, materials; iGEM and Biobricks – the cutting-edge of SynBio)

Social responsibility and ethical considerations for emerging technologies, sustainability, business prospects and considerations.

This unit aims for students understand the basics of synthetic biology/engineering biology for biotechnology and its real-world applications and societal context driving the bioeconomy of the future.

Knowledge and understanding

Describe – the DBTL cycle of synthetic biology and its social and economic context

Explain – the methods and concepts relevant at each step of the DBTL cycle

Apply – the DBTL concepts to new and existing applications and problem cases

Intellectual skills

Critical thinking

Evaluation of primary scientific literature in Synthetic biology/Engineering biology

Consideration of the wider societal implications of research in emerging technologies 

Practical skills

Find, evaluate, synthesise and use information from a variety of sources.

Express ideas effectively and communicate information appropriately and accurately in writing.

Attendance at the lectures, private study including critical analysis of the scientific
literature to address the problem question in the field of synthetic biology/engineering biology. 

Students will be introduced to the primary scientific literature and guided through the key steps required to understand and interpret the information

Facilitated learning (lectures and workshops): 14 hours
Independent study: 138 hours (directed reading, research:E-learning, question and answer sessions)

Formative feedback will be provided on written answer to a problem question.

Kwok R. Five hard truths for synthetic biology. Nature (2010) 463: 288–290 

Cravens, A., Payne, J. & Smolke, C.D. Synthetic biology strategies for microbial biosynthesis of plant natural products. Nat Commun 10, 2142 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-09848-w

Medema MH, Breitling R, Bovenberg RAL, and Takano E. Exploiting Plug-and-Play Synthetic Biology for Drug Discovery and Production in Microbes. Nature Rev Microbiol  (2011) 9:131–137.

Voigt CA. Synthetic biology 2020-2030: six commercially-available products that are changing our world.
Nat Commun. 2020 11:6379. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-20122-2. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20122-2

Medema MH, van Raaphorst R, Takano E, Breitling R. Computational tools for the synthetic design of biochemical pathways. Nature Rev. Microbiol. (2012) 10:191-202

Hollywood KA, Schmidt K, Takano E, Breitling R, Metabolomics tools for the synthetic biology of natural products, Current Opinion in Biotechnology, (2018) 54:114-120, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copbio.2018.02.015.

Kemp L, et al. Bioengineering Horizon Scan. eLife (2020) 29;9:e54489. doi: 10.7554/eLife.54489.