CENTRE FOR SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY OF FINE AND SPECIALITY CHEMICALS
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Manchester
Department Name: Chemistry
Abstract
The SYNBIOCHEM Centre will be a UK and European Centre of Excellence for Synthetic Biology in relation to fine and speciality chemicals and production. It will provide a national focus that spearheads UK academic and industrial research to accelerate the application of synthetic biology in fine and speciality chemicals production and the generation of new state-of-the-art tools to facilitate this translation.
Synthetic biology is an emerging science that has the capacity to transform the UK and European industrial landscape in sustainable manufacturing processes across all industrial sectors. UK industries, from large multinationals to a large number of small and medium enterprises, are internationally well positioned to benefit from the multitude of novel technologies developed in synthetic biology laboratories. To accelerate the translation of synthetic biology towards the fine and speciality chemicals market, the Centre will unite technologies, tools and ideas that emerge from academic institutions throughout the country, harvest synergies across the industrial and scientific sectors, and address the novel ethical and regulatory challenges faced by a disruptive technology at the interface of life sciences, chemistry and engineering.
The Centre will be located in the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, a unique cross-disciplinary research centre at the University of Manchester, bringing together more than 500 researchers with expertise in molecular biology, chemistry, engineering, material and computing science, and medicine at the forefront of international developments in synthetic biology. As part of the MIB, the Centre will build on a long and distinguished track record in spin-off formation and translating innovative research to industrial application, including a substantial portfolio of partnerships, e.g., with Syngenta, GSK, BASF and Shell.
The Centre will operate an open and inclusive approach driven by the unique industrial needs of synthetic biology. This will allow it to harness the scientific expertise of the synthetic biology community at Manchester and throughout the country, by facilitating multiple research projects positioned primarily at the Technology-Readiness Levels 1 to 3, but also including industry-driven academic-led proof-of-concept and proof-of-utility projects with partners from industry and academia at the higher Technology-Readiness Levels.
The Centre will develop major programs in the ethical and regulatory aspects faced by synthetic biology. By initiating early dialogue on responsible innovation, providing expertise, guidance and training in responsible governance of synthetic biology innovation, and promoting public engagement and training for the research community, the Centre will create the conditions for accelerated exploitation of the opportunities generated by the rapid advances in synthetic biology for the benefit of the UK economy. Colleagues at the Manchester Institute of Science Ethics and Innovation will be central to this effort to mitigate technology risks (real or perceived) associated with this new industrial revolution, while the University of Manchester Business School will develop the responsible innovation and market analysis strategies required to realize emerging opportunities as science progresses. This will be supported by analysis and stimulation of collaborative developments in this multi-disciplinary/multi-sector field.
The Centre will respond continuously and flexibly to developing needs from industry partners new scientific trends across the academic landscape. Its strategic goal is to position UK industry at the forefront of the exploiting synthetic biology for chemicals and natural products biosynthesis by providing a 'one-stop access' to world class physical infrastructure/scientific knowledge that will propel fine and speciality chemicals production towards sustainable manufacturing processes.
Synthetic biology is an emerging science that has the capacity to transform the UK and European industrial landscape in sustainable manufacturing processes across all industrial sectors. UK industries, from large multinationals to a large number of small and medium enterprises, are internationally well positioned to benefit from the multitude of novel technologies developed in synthetic biology laboratories. To accelerate the translation of synthetic biology towards the fine and speciality chemicals market, the Centre will unite technologies, tools and ideas that emerge from academic institutions throughout the country, harvest synergies across the industrial and scientific sectors, and address the novel ethical and regulatory challenges faced by a disruptive technology at the interface of life sciences, chemistry and engineering.
The Centre will be located in the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, a unique cross-disciplinary research centre at the University of Manchester, bringing together more than 500 researchers with expertise in molecular biology, chemistry, engineering, material and computing science, and medicine at the forefront of international developments in synthetic biology. As part of the MIB, the Centre will build on a long and distinguished track record in spin-off formation and translating innovative research to industrial application, including a substantial portfolio of partnerships, e.g., with Syngenta, GSK, BASF and Shell.
The Centre will operate an open and inclusive approach driven by the unique industrial needs of synthetic biology. This will allow it to harness the scientific expertise of the synthetic biology community at Manchester and throughout the country, by facilitating multiple research projects positioned primarily at the Technology-Readiness Levels 1 to 3, but also including industry-driven academic-led proof-of-concept and proof-of-utility projects with partners from industry and academia at the higher Technology-Readiness Levels.
The Centre will develop major programs in the ethical and regulatory aspects faced by synthetic biology. By initiating early dialogue on responsible innovation, providing expertise, guidance and training in responsible governance of synthetic biology innovation, and promoting public engagement and training for the research community, the Centre will create the conditions for accelerated exploitation of the opportunities generated by the rapid advances in synthetic biology for the benefit of the UK economy. Colleagues at the Manchester Institute of Science Ethics and Innovation will be central to this effort to mitigate technology risks (real or perceived) associated with this new industrial revolution, while the University of Manchester Business School will develop the responsible innovation and market analysis strategies required to realize emerging opportunities as science progresses. This will be supported by analysis and stimulation of collaborative developments in this multi-disciplinary/multi-sector field.
The Centre will respond continuously and flexibly to developing needs from industry partners new scientific trends across the academic landscape. Its strategic goal is to position UK industry at the forefront of the exploiting synthetic biology for chemicals and natural products biosynthesis by providing a 'one-stop access' to world class physical infrastructure/scientific knowledge that will propel fine and speciality chemicals production towards sustainable manufacturing processes.
Technical Summary
Manchester has a unique vision for fine and speciality chemicals production using synthetic biology that has been built on a long term strategy. SYNBIOCHEM is central to this strategy and will develop a series of unique and highly integrated interdisciplinary technology platforms and a truly world-leading physical infrastructure for contemporary fine and speciality chemicals production. These technology platforms will drive multiple science programs to accelerate delivery of bespoke synthetic biology solutions for chemicals synthesis by adopting modular 'plug-and-play' platform approaches and a production pipeline that embraces the 'design-build-test-deploy' life-cycle for turning knowledge assets into innovative chemicals production solutions. Dedicated technology scientists will drive these technology platforms together with expert academic leads, and the technology platforms will be managed within the governance framework of the Centre. This will ensure rapid delivery and implementation of tools/technologies across multiple programs relevant to fine and speciality chemicals production. Our vision is that SYNBIOCHEM will become the UK and European Centre of Excellence for expertise and resources for the (re-)design, engineering and analysis of biological parts, devices and systems for sustainable fine and speciality chemicals production. SYNBIOCHEM will stimulate innovation in chemicals biosynthesis and promote leading capability development that will drive new interactions with industry and other stakeholders. SYNBIOCHEM will benefit from the highly multidisciplinary environment and collaborative culture of the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology (MIB), its extensive network of industry partners and other stakeholders, MIB's track record in technology and methodology development, and its reputation for delivering competitive biotechnology-focused research to deliver a Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology focussed on the fine and speciality chemicals sector
Planned Impact
The SYNBIOCHEM Centre will generate societal and economic value through integration of wide-ranging and truly innovative research in synthetic biology in the fine and speciality chemicals areas. It will accelerate the translation of novel technology and science programs along the Technology-Readiness Levels towards commercialisation, and will be the national "One-Stop Access" for integration of synthetic biology approaches in fine and speciality chemicals production in terms of technology infrastructure and scientific expertise. The societal and economic value will be generated through the Centre's open collaborative culture, strong leadership and stakeholder engagement and excellence in the foundational and multidisciplinary science that is embedded in the Centre.
The general public will benefit from the open dialogue established by the Centre on the opportunities and risks associated with SynBio applications, through education and outreach activities. The public will be able to contribute their views to the ongoing debate on ethical aspects and help shape pathways to responsible innovation in the field. The Centre will actively provide opportunities for dialogue, bring together expertise (both in synthetic biology science and ethics) to provide the information needed to form informed opinions, and ensure public perspectives are gathered and deliberated upon at an early stage. The insights gained will contribute to the design of effective and responsible research, innovation and governance strategies for emerging synthetic biology technologies.
UK industries across a large range of sectors (e.g., fine chemicals, energy and fuels, pharmaceuticals and therapeutics, biomedical engineering and sensing, agriculture and food) will benefit from the expertise in the Centre and the accelerated access to advances in synthetic biology research. IP generation through activities in the Centre will lead to increased UK-based patent applications, licensing opportunities and potential spin out activity. The activities of the Centre will provide UK companies with a competitive advantage on the global market, based on more efficient and sustainable use of resources and the resulting increase in economic performance. Science in the synthetic biology field is advancing rapidly, and the Centre will progress synthetic biology technology-based applications on route to market by 2020 and beyond. The accelerated transfer of responsible synthetic biology technologies to industrial applications will support cleaner production processes (e.g. green chemistry), more sustainable manufacturing and energy sources (e.g. biofuels), and contribute to the creation of jobs and wealth within the UK chemicals and natural products industries and wider economy.
The UK academic synthetic biology community will benefit from early engagement with responsible synthetic biology research and innovation considerations. Early engagement with industrial partners will enable research at the cutting edge of synthetic biology science that is relevant to market trends. The resulting increased international visibility of UK synthetic biology activities and the intersector networking opportunities will stimulate excellence in synthetic biology research throughout the UK. The multidisciplinary interaction across scientific domains (biology, chemistry, computational science, engineering and the social sciences) will further strengthen the UK research base in synthetic biology. Synthetic biology human capital development throughout the UK will benefit from the inter-institution, interdisciplinary and intersectoral capabilities of the Centre. Students (UG and PG) and academic researchers will benefit from training, mentoring and other Centre activities to advance synthetic biology research applications, industrial engagement, entrepreneurship, and deliberation of responsibility in synthetic biology research and innovation and its societal and economic implications.
The general public will benefit from the open dialogue established by the Centre on the opportunities and risks associated with SynBio applications, through education and outreach activities. The public will be able to contribute their views to the ongoing debate on ethical aspects and help shape pathways to responsible innovation in the field. The Centre will actively provide opportunities for dialogue, bring together expertise (both in synthetic biology science and ethics) to provide the information needed to form informed opinions, and ensure public perspectives are gathered and deliberated upon at an early stage. The insights gained will contribute to the design of effective and responsible research, innovation and governance strategies for emerging synthetic biology technologies.
UK industries across a large range of sectors (e.g., fine chemicals, energy and fuels, pharmaceuticals and therapeutics, biomedical engineering and sensing, agriculture and food) will benefit from the expertise in the Centre and the accelerated access to advances in synthetic biology research. IP generation through activities in the Centre will lead to increased UK-based patent applications, licensing opportunities and potential spin out activity. The activities of the Centre will provide UK companies with a competitive advantage on the global market, based on more efficient and sustainable use of resources and the resulting increase in economic performance. Science in the synthetic biology field is advancing rapidly, and the Centre will progress synthetic biology technology-based applications on route to market by 2020 and beyond. The accelerated transfer of responsible synthetic biology technologies to industrial applications will support cleaner production processes (e.g. green chemistry), more sustainable manufacturing and energy sources (e.g. biofuels), and contribute to the creation of jobs and wealth within the UK chemicals and natural products industries and wider economy.
The UK academic synthetic biology community will benefit from early engagement with responsible synthetic biology research and innovation considerations. Early engagement with industrial partners will enable research at the cutting edge of synthetic biology science that is relevant to market trends. The resulting increased international visibility of UK synthetic biology activities and the intersector networking opportunities will stimulate excellence in synthetic biology research throughout the UK. The multidisciplinary interaction across scientific domains (biology, chemistry, computational science, engineering and the social sciences) will further strengthen the UK research base in synthetic biology. Synthetic biology human capital development throughout the UK will benefit from the inter-institution, interdisciplinary and intersectoral capabilities of the Centre. Students (UG and PG) and academic researchers will benefit from training, mentoring and other Centre activities to advance synthetic biology research applications, industrial engagement, entrepreneurship, and deliberation of responsibility in synthetic biology research and innovation and its societal and economic implications.
Organisations
- University of Manchester (Lead Research Organisation)
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (Co-funder)
- University College London (Collaboration)
- Henry Royce Institute (Collaboration)
- Tsinghua University China (Collaboration)
- IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON (Collaboration)
- Osaka University (Collaboration)
- Agilent Technologies (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- GlaxoSmithKline (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- Thermo Fisher Scientific (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- Dr. Reddy's Laboratories (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- UCB Pharma (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- Syngenta (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
Publications
Barley MH
(2017)
Recommendations on the Implementation of Genetic Algorithms for the Directed Evolution of Enzymes for Industrial Purposes.
in Chembiochem : a European journal of chemical biology
Barnawi H
(2020)
RNA-based thermoregulation of a Campylobacter jejuni zinc resistance determinant.
in PLoS pathogens
Barran P
(2018)
Editorial overview: Omics.
in Current opinion in chemical biology
Barran P
(2017)
From Microsolvation to Cell Permeation: Novel Separation Science for Drug Discovery.
in ACS central science
Bennett M
(2018)
Structure and Biocatalytic Scope of Coclaurine N -Methyltransferase
in Angewandte Chemie
Bennett MR
(2018)
Structure and Biocatalytic Scope of Coclaurine N-Methyltransferase.
in Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English)
Bennett MR
(2017)
Recent advances in methyltransferase biocatalysis.
in Current opinion in chemical biology
Berepiki A
(2020)
Development of High-Performance Whole Cell Biosensors Aided by Statistical Modeling.
in ACS synthetic biology
| Title | Illustrations |
| Description | We hosted the author and book illustrator, Lynne Chapman in our laboratories and meetings where she created alternative perspectives of our activities in a series of sketches. |
| Type Of Art | Artwork |
| Year Produced | 2016 |
| Impact | We have used the drawings on our website and printed materials. Displays of the artwork were featured in Manchester exhibitions open to the general public. |
| Title | Perfomance Poetry |
| Description | SYNBIOCHEM worked with Matt Pranesh a performance poet who presented his take on Synthetic Biology and its future impact at an ESOF spin off activity (evening performance) hosted in the John Rylands Library, Manchester. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2016 |
| Impact | This was an interesting interaction of scientists and a poet which resulted in a public performance highlighting SynBio. |
| Description | The SYNBIOCHEM Centre has delivered a biofoundry infrastructure capability that supports the engineering of biology and creation of microbial cell factories for chemicals production. It has created new routes to chemicals manufacture and access to new molecules for materials from biology which will help transition to sustainable chemicals production processes and reduce reliance on petrochemicals. |
| Exploitation Route | Work initiated in the Centre is continuing through a portfolio of research grants and interactions with industry. In particular the SYNBIOCHEM Centre is working with the Future Biomanufacturing research hub to utilise the pipeline capability for new routes to chemicals manufacture to accelerate the delivery of chemicals biomanufacturing in the UK. |
| Sectors | Aerospace, Defence and Marine,Chemicals,Manufacturing, including Industrial Biotechology,Pharmaceuticals and Medical Biotechnology |
| URL | https://synbiochem.co.uk/ |
| Description | BIA Engineering Biology Sub Committee membership - R Le Feuvre |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Membership of a guideline committee |
| Description | BSI Standard for RRI (PAS 440) - P Shapira |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| Impact | This BSI Standard for Responsible Research and Innovation provides easy guidelines for adoption by industry. |
| URL | https://pages.bsigroup.com/l/35972/2020-03-17/2cgcnc1?utm_source=pardot&utm_medium=email&utm_campaig... |
| Description | Contributed to the Engineering Biology UK 2030 Chemicals production paper |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Contribution to a national consultation/review |
| Description | EU-IBISBA (ESFRI Candidature submission) |
| Geographic Reach | Europe |
| Policy Influence Type | Implementation circular/rapid advice/letter to e.g. Ministry of Health |
| Description | Engineering Biology for the UK |
| Geographic Reach | Multiple continents/international |
| Policy Influence Type | Contribution to a national consultation/review |
| URL | https://ktn-uk.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/EBLC-Building-back-better-with-Engineering-Biology_upl... |
| Description | External advisor for European Commission Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks on synthetic biology |
| Geographic Reach | Europe |
| Policy Influence Type | Citation in other policy documents |
| Impact | Made huge impact on the policy for defining Synthetic Biology, identifying the risks for Synthetic Biology and future recommendations in Synthetic Biology risk assessment at a European level. |
| Description | Strategic review for Industrial Challenge Fund |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Contribution to a national consultation/review |
| Description | Transatlantic perspective on emerging issues in biological engineering |
| Geographic Reach | Multiple continents/international |
| Policy Influence Type | Contribution to a national consultation/review |
| Description | UK Policy Jisc FAIR in Practice |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Contribution to a national consultation/review |
| Description | UK SynBio Strategic plan 2016 |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Contribution to a national consultation/review |
| Description | BBSRC |
| Amount | £1,170,000 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | BB/N023536/1 |
| Organisation | Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 09/2016 |
| End | 08/2021 |
| Description | BBSRC ALERT 16 |
| Amount | £341,417 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | BB/R000093/1 |
| Organisation | Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 06/2017 |
| End | 05/2018 |
| Description | BBSRC ALERT 16 |
| Amount | £214,394 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | BB/R000069/1 |
| Organisation | Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 08/2017 |
| End | 07/2018 |
| Description | BBSRC BIOCATNET award |
| Amount | £46,647 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | IB-SCA 001. |
| Organisation | Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) |
| Department | Networks in Industrial Biotechnology and Bioenergy (NIBB) |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 11/2017 |
| End | 02/2018 |
| Description | BBSRC FTMA |
| Amount | £141,550 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | BB/R506497/1 |
| Organisation | Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 11/2017 |
| End | 03/2019 |
| Description | BBSRC International award |
| Amount | £43,786 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | BB/N021037/1 |
| Organisation | Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 07/2016 |
| End | 07/2020 |
| Description | BBSRC Japan Partnering award |
| Amount | £51,000 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | BB/N021975/1 |
| Organisation | Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 07/2016 |
| End | 06/2020 |
| Description | BBSRC Partnering award |
| Amount | £51,000 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | BB/N021975/1 |
| Organisation | Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 07/2016 |
| End | 07/2020 |
| Description | BBSRC responsive mode Munro |
| Amount | £462,081 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | BB/N006275/1 |
| Organisation | Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 07/2016 |
| End | 06/2019 |
| Description | BBSRC slola Micklefield |
| Amount | £1,168,602 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | BB/N23536/1 |
| Organisation | Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 08/2016 |
| End | 01/2021 |
| Description | BBSRC-FASEP |
| Amount | £2,082,439 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | BB/P01738X/1 |
| Organisation | Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 01/2017 |
| End | 12/2021 |
| Description | Centre for Biocatalytic Manufacture of New Modalities (CBNM) |
| Amount | £2,098,678 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/S005226/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 11/2018 |
| End | 10/2023 |
| Description | Centre for Biocatalytic Manufacture of New Modalities (CBNM) |
| Amount | £2,098,678 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/S005226/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 11/2018 |
| End | 10/2023 |
| Description | Dstl award |
| Amount | £107,544 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | 1000101995 |
| Organisation | Defence Science & Technology Laboratory (DSTL) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 10/2016 |
| End | 09/2017 |
| Description | Dstl award |
| Amount | £500,000 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | DSTLX1000101893 |
| Organisation | Defence Science & Technology Laboratory (DSTL) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 08/2016 |
| End | 07/2019 |
| Description | Dstl award |
| Amount | £108,000 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | 1000101995 |
| Organisation | Defence Science & Technology Laboratory (DSTL) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 05/2016 |
| End | 05/2017 |
| Description | Dstl award |
| Amount | £83,220 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Defence Science & Technology Laboratory (DSTL) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 04/2017 |
| End | 01/2018 |
| Description | Dstl award |
| Amount | £99,000 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | 10000104112 |
| Organisation | Defence Science & Technology Laboratory (DSTL) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 07/2016 |
| End | 03/2017 |
| Description | Dstl award |
| Amount | £99,601 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | DSTLX1000104112 |
| Organisation | Defence Science & Technology Laboratory (DSTL) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 07/2016 |
| End | 03/2020 |
| Description | Dstl award |
| Amount | £96,407 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | DSTLX-100012335 |
| Organisation | Defence Science & Technology Laboratory (DSTL) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 07/2017 |
| End | 06/2018 |
| Description | EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in BioDesign Engineering |
| Amount | £7,001,622 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/S022856/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2019 |
| End | 09/2027 |
| Description | EPSRC materials |
| Amount | £401,000 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/N025504/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 05/2019 |
| End | 05/2019 |
| Description | EU H2020 |
| Amount | £304,312 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | MS SPIDOC |
| Organisation | European Commission |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | European Union (EU) |
| Start | 09/2018 |
| End | 08/2021 |
| Description | EU H2020 |
| Amount | £100,399 (GBP) |
| Organisation | European Commission H2020 |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | Belgium |
| Start | 01/2017 |
| End | 12/2019 |
| Description | EU H2020 chassis |
| Amount | £819,061 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | 764364 |
| Organisation | European Commission H2020 |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | Belgium |
| Start | 01/2018 |
| End | 10/2021 |
| Description | EU H2020 chassis |
| Amount | £1,168,602 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | 720793-2 |
| Organisation | European Commission H2020 |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | Belgium |
| Start | 01/2017 |
| End | 12/2020 |
| Description | EU H2020 chassis |
| Amount | £1,289,926 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | 720793-2 |
| Organisation | European Commission |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | European Union (EU) |
| Start | 01/2017 |
| End | 12/2020 |
| Description | EU H2020-GARRI-2015-1 |
| Amount | € 1,486,175 (EUR) |
| Funding ID | 710500 |
| Organisation | European Commission |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | European Union (EU) |
| Start | 06/2016 |
| End | 11/2018 |
| Description | EU H2020-GARRI-2015-1 |
| Amount | £148,000 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | 710500 |
| Organisation | European Commission |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | European Union (EU) |
| Start | 06/2016 |
| End | 11/2018 |
| Description | Future Biomanufacturing Research Hub |
| Amount | £10,284,509 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/S01778X/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 04/2019 |
| End | 03/2026 |
| Description | GeneORator: a novel and high-throughput method for the synthetic biology-based improvement of any enzyme |
| Amount | £201,893 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | BB/S004955/1 |
| Organisation | Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 05/2019 |
| End | 08/2021 |
| Description | H2020 Infrastructure |
| Amount | € 5,000,000 (EUR) |
| Funding ID | H2020: IBISBA 1.0 |
| Organisation | European Commission H2020 |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | Belgium |
| Start | 09/2017 |
| End | 08/2021 |
| Description | High Resolution High Throughput Mass Spectrometry to Characterise Materials, Chemicals, and BioCatalysts |
| Amount | £1,099,473 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/T019328/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 01/2020 |
| End | 12/2022 |
| Description | High Resolution High Throughput Mass Spectrometry to Characterise Materials, Chemicals, and BioCatalysts |
| Amount | £1,099,473 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/T019328/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 01/2020 |
| End | 12/2022 |
| Description | IAA Award - AIBLHiCoS: a novel pKa predictor |
| Amount | £60,175 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | BB/S506692/1 |
| Organisation | Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2019 |
| End | 07/2019 |
| Description | MONOPOLY |
| Amount | £177,697 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | 834816 |
| Organisation | European Commission |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | European Union (EU) |
| Start | 06/2019 |
| End | 06/2021 |
| Description | Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry imaging for advanced chemical and materials analysis |
| Amount | £810,450 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/T031301/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 08/2020 |
| End | 07/2023 |
| Description | New Developments in Quantitative 3D Chemical Imaging |
| Amount | £844,822 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/S019863/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 06/2019 |
| End | 06/2022 |
| Description | OLEAginous yeast platforms for FINE chemicals - OLEFINE |
| Amount | £408,476 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | ERC H2020-NMBP-BIO-2016 |
| Organisation | European Commission |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | European Union (EU) |
| Start | 01/2018 |
| End | 12/2021 |
| Description | ONRG |
| Amount | £13,980 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | N62909-17-1-2052 |
| Organisation | ONRG Office of Naval Research Global |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United States |
| Start | 05/2017 |
| End | 06/2017 |
| Description | Reverse engineering the soil microbiome: detecting, modeling, and optimizing signal impacts on microbiome metabolic functions |
| Amount | £812,607 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | NE/T010959/1 |
| Organisation | Natural Environment Research Council |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 01/2020 |
| End | 01/2023 |
| Description | Reverse engineering the soil microbiome: detecting, modelling and optimizing signal impacts on microbiome metabolic functions. |
| Amount | £812,607 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | NE/T010959 |
| Organisation | Natural Environment Research Council |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 01/2020 |
| End | 01/2023 |
| Description | Royal Society |
| Amount | £229,000 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | 1000101995 |
| Organisation | The Royal Society |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 12/2016 |
| End | 12/2018 |
| Description | ShikiFactory |
| Amount | £8,000,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | European Commission |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | European Union (EU) |
| Start | 01/2019 |
| End | 12/2022 |
| Description | The aspergillus fumigatus gene and non-coding RNA knockout library. |
| Amount | £771,344 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | 208396 |
| Organisation | Wellcome Trust |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 01/2018 |
| End | 12/2021 |
| Description | Tripping the light fantastic: elucidating global protein structural change correlated with chemical change across the femtosecond to second timescale |
| Amount | £1,419,928 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/S030336/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 10/2019 |
| End | 09/2024 |
| Description | UCB CASE |
| Amount | £80,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | UCB Pharma |
| Sector | Private |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 10/2015 |
| End | 09/2019 |
| Description | University matched funding |
| Amount | £500,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | University of Manchester |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 08/2016 |
| End | 07/2019 |
| Title | Automated Design/Build/Test/Learn pipeline |
| Description | The Design/Build/Test/Learn pipeline allows rapid prototyping of engineered microbial strains for the production of chemicals and materials. This was highlighted in a recent publication and represents a powerful research "bio-foundry" platform |
| Type Of Material | Technology assay or reagent |
| Year Produced | 2018 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | This D/B/T/L pipeline is being used to rapidly engineer microbes and represents a major capability of the SYNBIOCHEM Centre. |
| URL | http://synbiochem.co.uk/synbiochem-pipeline/ |
| Title | Automated Directed Evolution library-screening platform |
| Description | Our Directed Evolution (DE) library-screening platform automates cell culture (colony picking, bacterial culture and protein expression) and protein purification (His-tag purification) processes in 96-well format. |
| Type Of Material | Technology assay or reagent |
| Year Produced | 2017 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | Our Directed Evolution (DE) library-screening platform is providing methods that have supported the evolution of key enzymes in the chemical synthesis of mono-terpenes. |
| Title | Automated Ligase Cycling Reaction |
| Description | We have created an automated optimised ligase cycling reaction assembly platform for assembling genetic pathways to allow fully automated generation of large pathway libraries. |
| Type Of Material | Technology assay or reagent |
| Year Produced | 2017 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | This method is now providing automated generation of large pathway libraries to a wide cohort of users. |
| Title | Biochem4j |
| Description | A freely available graph database of integrated chemical, reaction, enzyme and taxonomic data, based on the neo4j database. Biochem4j has applications in pathway elucidation, enzyme selection and metabolic modelling, acting as a knowledge base which brings together distributed data into an integrated and queryable system. It currently contains relevant information of known relationships between reactions (36765), chemicals (19735), enzymes (245704) and organisms (8431). Publication: Swainston N, Batista-Navarro R, Carbonell P, Dobson PD, Dunstan M, Jervis AJ, Vinaixa M, Williams AR, Ananiadou S, Faulon JL, Mendes P, Kell DB, Scrutton NS, Breitling R. (2017). biochem4j: Integrated and extensible biochemical knowledge through graph databases. PloS one, 12, e0179130. |
| Type Of Material | Technology assay or reagent |
| Year Produced | 2017 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | Used regularly in our research group. |
| URL | http://biochem4j.org/ |
| Title | CodonGenie |
| Description | Application for designing ambiguous codons to support protein mutagenesis. Given a user-defined target collection of amino acids and an intended host organism, CodonGenie will design and analyse all ambiguous codons that encode the required amino acids. The codons are ranked according to their efficiency in encoding the required amino acids while minimising the encoding of additional amino acids and stop codons. Publication: Swainston N, Currin A, Green L, Breitling R, Day PJ, Kell DB. (2017). CodonGenie: optimised ambiguous codon design tools. PeerJ Computer Science, 7, e120. DOI: 10.7717/peerj-cs.120. |
| Type Of Material | Technology assay or reagent |
| Year Produced | 2017 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | Protein mutagenesis design tool used by the research group. |
| Title | GenORator |
| Description | A novel methodology for creating variant libraries for directed evolution, which enables the mutation of large numbers of amino acid codons simultaneously in a controlled and precise manner. |
| Type Of Material | Technology assay or reagent |
| Year Produced | 2017 |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | A patent application has been submitted to protect this methodology and its commercial use is currently being developed through proof-of-concept funding with companies. |
| Title | GeneGenie |
| Description | An optimised oligomer design tool for variant genetic library design. |
| Type Of Material | Technology assay or reagent |
| Year Produced | 2017 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | None as yet |
| URL | http://gene-genie.org |
| Title | HTP MS quantification |
| Description | The Centre's Test team has contributed major innovative mass spectrometry (MS) screening protocols that provide rapid high-throughput quantification for our target compounds, complemented with new data analysis/processing tools. Together these are now providing vital analysis for wide-ranging projects. These include: HTP limonene quantification method using GC-QToF MS (<5-10 mins per sample (compared with >30 mins); HTP flavonoid and alkaloid targeted MS measurements using LC-QqQ MS in 96-well format with reduced screening times of approx. 2min per sample; New analysis software developed (iTERP, R2QqQ and MetTrap) R packages for rapid MS data analysis. |
| Type Of Material | Technology assay or reagent |
| Year Produced | 2017 |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | These tools and methods are providing rapid identification and quantification of our target compounds and underpins much of the work in the Centre. We will make these available to wider audiences in the next year. |
| Title | PartsGenie |
| Description | A web application for the design of reusable synthetic biology parts that offers simultaneous codon optimisation, RBS design, CDS RBS removal, assembly and synthesis compatibility. It is designed to bridge the gap between optimisation tools for the design of novel parts, the representation of such designs in community-developed data standards such as Synthetic Biology Open Language (SBOL), and the sharing of designs in journal-recommended data repositories (JBEI-ICE). It facilitates the design, optimisation and dissemination of reusable synthetic biology parts through a single, integrated application. PartsGenie has been used for the design of most synthetic DNA used in the SYNBIOCHEM Centre and elsewhere in the MIB and is now freely available to the wider synthetic biology community. Publication: Swainston N, Dunstan M, Jervis AJ, Robinson CJ, Carbonell P, Williams AR, Faulon JL, Scrutton NS, Kell DB. (2018). PartsGenie: an integrated tool for optimizing and sharing synthetic biology parts. Bioinformatics. 2018 Jul 1;34(13):2327-2329. |
| Type Of Material | Technology assay or reagent |
| Year Produced | 2018 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | Codon optimisation tool used for design of reusable synthetic biology parts. Used regularly by research groups in MIB. |
| Title | Real-time screening of bacterial colonies |
| Description | To identify new biocatalytic activities is a widely adopted tool in biotechnology, but is constrained by the requirements for colorimetric or tag-based detection methods. Our unique label-free screening platform for biotransformations in live colonies using desorption electrospray ionization coupled with ion mobility mass spectrometry imaging (DiBT-IMMS). The screening method has been demonstrated for both ammonia lyases and P450 monooxygenases expressed within live bacterial colonies, and enables multiplexing of enzyme variants and substrate libraries simultaneously. Yan C, Parmeggiani F, Jones EA, Claude E, Hussain SA, Turner NJ, Flitsch SL, Barran PE. (2017). Real-time screening of biocatalysts in live bacterial colonies. J. American Chemical Soc. 139, 1408-11. |
| Type Of Material | Technology assay or reagent |
| Year Produced | 2017 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | This new label-free platform for screening bio-transformations in live colonies is likely to provide new knowledge and insights to identify biocatalytic activities. |
| Title | RetroPath2.0 |
| Description | Used to explore the chemical biosynthetic space, RetroPath provides an automated open source workflow based on generalized reaction rules that performs retrosynthesis search from chassis to target through an efficient and well-controlled protocol. Publication: Delépine B, Duigou T, Carbonell P, Faulon JL. (2017). RetroPath2.0: A retrosynthesis workflow for metabolic engineers. Metabolic Engineering, 45, 158-70. Koch M, Duigou T, Carbonell P, Faulon JL. (2017). Molecular structures enumeration and virtual screening in the chemical space with RetroPath2.0. Journal of Cheminformatics, 9(1):64. |
| Type Of Material | Technology assay or reagent |
| Year Produced | 2016 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | A tool that is regularly used in our research pipeline to find biosynthetic pathways to engineer host organisms |
| URL | https://www.myexperiment.org/workflows/4987.html |
| Title | SelProm |
| Description | A design tool that serves as a parts repository of plasmid expression strength and predicts portability rules between constituative and inducible plasmids. |
| Type Of Material | Technology assay or reagent |
| Year Produced | 2019 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | A design tool used regularly for the prototyping and optimisation of plasmid-based recombinant gene expression |
| Title | Selenzyme |
| Description | An on line enzyme selection tool for target reactions or set of reactions for metabolic pathway design that allows us to mine candidate enzyme sequences for any desired target reaction or set of reactions in a pathway and the search for alternative routes or pathways leading to non-natural products. Selenzyme uses our biochem4j graph database as its main data source and provides bespoke sequence selection for automated workflows. Publication: Carbonell P, Wong J, Swainston N, Takano E, Turner NJ, Scrutton NS, Kell DB, Breitling R, Faulon JL. Selenzyme: Enzyme selection tool for pathway design. Bioinformatics. 34(12), 2153-2154. This tool is now used by many groups within the University of Manchester but also nationally and internationally |
| Type Of Material | Technology assay or reagent |
| Year Produced | 2017 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | This tool is regularly used to identify enzymes in the construction of our engineered pathways in E coli hosts. It is widely used both internally at the University of Manchester but also nationally / internationally through online line free access. |
| URL | http://selenzyme.synbiochem.co.uk/ |
| Title | SensiPath |
| Description | A web server tool (co-developed with Micalis/INRA) to identify putative biochemical transformations of target compounds and allow identification of easily detectable compounds for screening and identification of potential biosensors. Publication: Delepine B, Libis V, Carbonell P, Faulon JL. (2016). SensiPath: computer-aided design of sensing-enabling metabolic pathways. Nucleic acids research, 44: W226-231. |
| Type Of Material | Technology assay or reagent |
| Year Produced | 2017 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | A computational tool regularly used in our SYNBIOCHEM pipeline |
| URL | http://sensipath.micalis.fr/ |
| Title | new instrument platform for the rapid discovery and engineering of biological systems for the manufacture of new advanced Materials from Biology |
| Description | The Royce Institute for advanced materials research and innovation (www.royce.ac.uk) has partnered with the MIB and Future BRH to provide a new instrument platform for the rapid discovery and engineering of biological systems for the manufacture of new advanced Materials from Biology. This is a crucial and burgeoning area of research for the Royce future Chemicals Material Discovery theme and an important focus for the Future BRH. The infrastructure delivers an internationally field-leading capability offering an integrated and fully automated directed evolution platform. Located on the first floor of the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology (MIB), the equipment includes automated colony picking, next generation sequencing (PacBio), UHPLC analytics and a fully integrated robotics platform which was installed in July 2020 (comprising acoustic and pipette based liquid handling robots, incubators, thermal cyclers etc.). |
| Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
| Year Produced | 2020 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | Applied to enzyme engineering and synthetic biology protocols the platform complements existing infrastructure and supports research towards: sustainable routes to advanced materials; end of life degradation and recycling; and next generation bio-inspired materials. This equipment is available to new users through academic and industry collaborations. |
| Title | MIBiG |
| Description | Bacteria, fungi and plants produce an enormous variety of small functional molecules with manifold biological activities, e.g., as antibiotics, immunosuppressants, and signaling molecules. The biosynthesis of such molecules is encoded by compact genomic units (biosynthetic gene clusters). Over the past decades, hundreds of biosynthetic gene clusters encoding the biosynthesis of secondary metabolites have been characterized. Although dozens of biosynthetic gene clusters are published and thousands are sequenced annually (with or without their surrounding genome sequence), very little effort has been put into structuring this information. Hence, it is currently very difficult to prioritize gene clusters for experimental characterization, to identify the fundamental architectural principles of biosynthetic gene clusters, to understand which ecological parameters drive their evolution, and to obtain an informative 'parts registry' of building blocks for the synthetic biology of secondary metabolite biosynthesis. Therefore, developing a genomic standard for experimentally characterized biosynthetic gene clusters (e.g., Minimum Information about a BIosynthetic Gene cluster, MIBiG) would be of great value to the field of microbial secondary metabolism. Building on the MIxS standards for ecological and environmental contextualization, information on, e.g., enzyme function, substrate specificities, functional subclusters, regulatory and transport systems, operon structure, chemical moieties of the end compound and its intermediates, biosynthetic precursor compounds, compound bioactivity and molecular targets and compound toxicity could be added to allow cross-linking the information to biochemistry, pharmaceutical properties, genomic structure and ecology. Using the already developed computational pipeline for analysis of biosynthetic gene clusters antiSMASH (http://antismash.secondarymetabolites.org/), which has quickly become a standard in the field, information on characterized biosynthetic gene clusters will be linked to the untapped wealth of thousands of unknown gene clusters that have recently been unearthed by massive genome sequencing efforts. Taken together, this has the potential to guide the characterization of new metabolites by allowing to optimize the sampling of diversity at different levels and to identify the biochemical, genomic and ecological parameters that are key predictors of pharmaceutically relevant biological activities. Moreover, it can transform the unordered pile of literature on secondary metabolites into a structured and annotated catalogue of parts that can be used as building blocks to design new biochemical pathways with synthetic biology. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2015 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | MIBiG will the better description and contextualization of sequence data, of important sequence elements, with concrete biotechnological applications that will increase the visibility and applicability of the GSC and its mission in the fields of applied microbiology, synthetic biology, natural products chemistry and enzymology. |
| URL | http://gensc.org/projects/mibig/ |
| Description | CDT BioDesign Engineering |
| Organisation | Imperial College London |
| Department | Department of Infectious Disease & Epidemiology |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | This is an EPSRC funded CDT programme run by Imperial College with the University of Manchester and University College London. We are working to provide PhD training both to the whole cohort (through RRI training elements) but also to individual PhD students who will work with the Centres as part of their Masters project and conduct their PhDs registered at the University of Manchester. We are full collaborators on this project |
| Collaborator Contribution | Provision and hosting of PhD training. |
| Impact | This is a multidisciplinary collaboration training PhD students in BioDesign Engineering. |
| Start Year | 2019 |
| Description | CDT BioDesign Engineering |
| Organisation | University College London |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | This is an EPSRC funded CDT programme run by Imperial College with the University of Manchester and University College London. We are working to provide PhD training both to the whole cohort (through RRI training elements) but also to individual PhD students who will work with the Centres as part of their Masters project and conduct their PhDs registered at the University of Manchester. We are full collaborators on this project |
| Collaborator Contribution | Provision and hosting of PhD training. |
| Impact | This is a multidisciplinary collaboration training PhD students in BioDesign Engineering. |
| Start Year | 2019 |
| Description | Global Biofoundry Alliance |
| Organisation | Imperial College London |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | The SYNBIOCHEM centre has partnered with other biofoundries across the globe to share expertise and knowhow; intensify collaboration and communication; develop technical and operational responses to common challenges; enhance visibility, impact and sustainability of non-commercial biofoundries; and explore globally relevant and societally impactful grand challenge collaborative projects. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Partners are sharing expertise and knowhow in a similar way to the SYNBIOCHEM biofoundry to intensify collaboration and communication; develop technical and operational responses to common challenges; enhance visibility, impact and sustainability of non-commercial biofoundries; and explore globally relevant and societally impactful grand challenge collaborative projects. |
| Impact | Sharing of expertise across the design/build/test/learn synthetic biology disciplines. Resulted in joint seminar series and workshops to share ideas and develop collaborations. |
| Start Year | 2019 |
| Description | Henry Royce Institute |
| Organisation | Henry Royce Institute |
| Department | Henry Royce Institute – University of Manchester Facilities |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | This collaboration has seen the development of a major equipment capability in the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology. The new infrastructure which includes an integrated automation platform and next generation sequencing will provide major capabilities for the rapid discovery and evolution of molecules for materials and the engineering of new advanced materials from biology. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Major funding has been provided by the Henry Royce institute for equipment infrastructure which will support interdisciplinary collaborations with the Institute. This capability is being technically supported by members of the SYNBIOCHEM Centre and Future Biomanufacturing Research Hub. |
| Impact | This is a multidisciplinary collaboration which will bring together expertise in biocatalysts, synthetic biology, biomanufacturing/biotechnology and materials scientists. |
| Start Year | 2019 |
| Description | Manchester Tsignhua PhD Partnership |
| Organisation | Tsinghua University China |
| Country | China |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | SYNBIOCHEM developed collaborations with Tsinghua which led to the development of a 2+2 dual degree PhD programme in synthetic and systems biology with applicants spending years at Manchester and Beijing. From early collaborations and the signing of a memorandum of understanding the scheme is funded jointly between the 2 institutions. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Tsinghua collaborator George Guoqiang Chen signed a memorandum of understanding which developed into a strong relationship and co-funding of the PhD scheme. |
| Impact | The first set of PhD students started the course in September 2020 |
| Start Year | 2018 |
| Description | University of Osaka metabolomics |
| Organisation | Osaka University |
| Country | Japan |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | We aim:To establish strong and successful research collaborations in the analytical area of synthetic biology for fine and speciality chemical between top research groups in the UK and Japan for added potential value to BBSRC and JST science portfolios; Share access to top quality research facilities, technical knowledge and expertise in both institutions, and benefit from the added strengths implied by the complementarity of instrumentation at each institute, helping develop imaging MS as a functional tool in synthetic biology; Provide early career scientists/postdoctoral fellows an opportunity to develop their own expertise and ideas by experiencing international groups and helping prepare their own independent grant applications; Establish joint proof-of-concept research resulting in joint grant applications and collaborative partnerships |
| Collaborator Contribution | The Osaka team will help to establish joint proof-of-concept synthetic biology based research using novel imaging mass spectrometry platforms in tandem with established untargeted metabolomics methodologies;To establish strong and successful research collaborations in the analytical area of synthetic biology for fine and speciality chemical between top research groups in the UK and Japan for added potential value to BBSRC and JST science portfolios; Share access to top quality research facilities, technical knowledge and expertise in both institutions, and benefit from the added strengths implied by the complementarity of instrumentation at each institute, helping develop imaging MS as a functional tool in synthetic biology; Establish joint proof-of-concept research resulting in joint grant applications and collaborative partnerships |
| Impact | The project has just started but we have already started collaborations with the University of Osaka metabolomics group by inviting them to Manchester and holding a Bacterial Metabolomics Workshop on 24th June 2016 with invited speakers: Nicola Zamboni (ETH Zurich), Eiichiro Fukusaki (Osaka University), Karsten Hiller (University of Luxemburg), Sanjay Swarup (National University of Singapore), Shuichi Shimma (Osaka University), Sastia Putri (Osaka University), Rainer Breitling (University of Manchester). In 22-27 May 2017, Katherine Hollywood (named from Manchester) visited Osaka for one week; Eriko Takano and Rainer Breitling visited University of Osaka 14th March 2017 and both gave a seminar to the MSc and PhD students; PhD student Katsuaki Nitta visited to University of Manchester, 26 June-31 July 2017 to learn Streptomyces cultivation techniques and the QExactive analysis; Eriko Takano visited Aug 2017 and had a close discussion with Sastia Putri, Prof Fukusaki and Katsuaki Nitta on the project; Dr Kamila Schmidt (1 Oct - 12 Oct 2018) and Prof Eriko Takano (1- 17 Oct 2018) visited University of Osaka, Prof Fukusaki's lab to work together with Sastia Putri and Katsuaki Nitta on Streptomyces metabolomics using wt M145 strain versus antibiotic overproducer to determine possible metabolic engineering strategies arising from the semi-targetted metabolomics analysis-- this is a multidisciplinary collaboration: synthetic biology, metabolomics, computational modelling; a second workshop was organised on 28 June 2019 "Shimadzu Metabolomics Workshop" which was sponsored partly by Shimadzu with speakers from Shimadzu, Osaka University and University of Manchester which also included talks from early career researchers from both Manchester and Shimadzu; Prof Rainer Breitling and Prof Eriko Takano visited Osaka University on 19-24 July 2019 to give a seminar to the overseas MSc course in Department of Advanced Science and Biotechnology and to discuss further with Prof Fukusaki's group, Sastia Putri's group and Katsuaki Nitta on the use of informatics in the metabolomic analysis; Prof Eriko Takano visited University of Osaka on 25-31 Oct 2019 for futher discussions; Prof Eriko Takano visited University of Osaka on 15 -28 Feb 2020 to participate in the final year MSc presentations of the MSc course in Department of Advanced Science and Biotechnology and to discuss with Katsuaki Nitta on his PhD project. This was a crucial meeting as Katsuaki Nitta will need to finish his thesis by Dec 2020 and detailed discussion took place for publication strategy. Takano, Breitling lab in University of Manchester had several Skype conferences with Fukusaki lab, Sastia Putri and Katsuaki Nitta on metabolic modelling of Streptomyces coelicolor -- this is a multidisciplinary collaboration on metabolomics, computational modelling; Takano has been invited to be a honorary Professor/Cross-appointment at the University of Osaka, allowing her to stay in Osaka for 4 weeks/year from April 2018-March 2020 A new project collaboration has started with a MSc student Marvin Nathanael Iman, who is in the Fukusaki lab, however the student has decided to move on and has now started a new project. Takano had several zoom meetings with Sastia Putri and Katsuaki Nitta on Nitta's PhD project. Nitta's PhD project has led to two publications: Nitta K, Breitling R, Takano E, Putri SP, Fukusaki E. Investigation of the effects of actinorhodin biosynthetic gene cluster expression and a rpoB point mutation on the metabolome of Streptomyces coelicolor M1146. J Biosci Bioeng (2021) in press.; Nitta K, Del Carratore F, Breitling R, Takano E*, Putri SP*, Fukusaki E. Multi-omics analysis of the effect of cAMP on actinorhodin production in Streptomyces coelicolor. Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol. (2020) 8, 595552. (*joint corresponding authors). A new MSc student Mary Faith Adan has started in University of Osaka to collaboration on metabolomics on Streptomyces supervised by Dr Sastia Putri and Prof Fukusaki in Feb 2021. |
| Start Year | 2016 |
| Title | Biosynthetic Mint: |
| Description | A partnership with GlaxoSmithKline resulted in a UoM patent for producing a menthol isomer. |
| IP Reference | US20160289702 |
| Protection | Patent granted |
| Year Protection Granted | 2016 |
| Licensed | Commercial In Confidence |
| Impact | None |
| Title | Compositions and methods for recombinant biosynthesis of propane |
| Description | New synthetic biology routes to renewable bio-propane. |
| IP Reference | US20170218401 |
| Protection | Patent application published |
| Year Protection Granted | 2017 |
| Licensed | Yes |
| Impact | None to date |
| Title | Monoterpenoid biosynthesis |
| Description | This follows on from the early patenting of the biosynthetic routes to menthol and the second patent protects the identity of a key evolved enzyme derived from keto steroid isomerase. |
| IP Reference | GB1719530.6 |
| Protection | Patent granted |
| Year Protection Granted | 2017 |
| Licensed | No |
| Impact | None as yet. |
| Title | Polyketides |
| Description | Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a method for expressing a soluble type II polyketide synthase (PKS) in an E.coli host, the method comprising introducing a nucleic acid sequence |
| IP Reference | GB1810747.4 |
| Protection | Patent application published |
| Year Protection Granted | 2018 |
| Licensed | No |
| Impact | Nothing yet |
| Title | Variant Nucleotide Library |
| Description | The application related to the GenORator methodology for creating variant libraries for directed evolution. |
| IP Reference | GB1709308.9 |
| Protection | Patent application published |
| Year Protection Granted | 2017 |
| Licensed | No |
| Impact | This work is being developed through further proof-of-concept funding. |
| Title | Biochem4j |
| Description | A freely available graph database of integrated chemical, reaction, enzyme and taxonomic data, based on the neo4j database. biochem4j (71) has applications in pathway elucidation, enzyme selection and metabolic modelling, acting as a knowledge base which brings together distributed data into an integrated and queryable system. It currently contains relevant information of known relationships between reactions (36765), chemicals (19735), enzymes (245704) and organisms (8431). Swainston N, Batista-Navarro R, Carbonell P, Dobson PD, Dunstan M, Jervis AJ, Vinaixa M, Williams AR, Ananiadou S, Faulon JL, Mendes P, Kell DB, Scrutton NS, Breitling R. (2017). biochem4j: Integrated and extensible biochemical knowledge through graph databases. PloS one, 12, e0179130. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2017 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | This graph database is providing the Centre with an extended knowledge base to inform our chemical pathway design. |
| URL | http://biochem4j.org |
| Title | CodonGenie |
| Description | Freely available web application for designing ambiguous codons to support these protein mutagenesis applications. Given a user-defined target collection of amino acids and an intended host organism, CodonGenie will design and analyse all ambiguous codons that encode the required amino acids. The codons are ranked according to their efficiency in encoding the required amino acids while minimising the encoding of additional amino acids and stop codons. Swainston N, Currin A, Green L, Breitling R, Day PJ, Kell DB. (2017). CodonGenie: optimised ambiguous codon design tools. PeerJ Computer Science, 7, e120. DOI: 10.7717/peerj-cs.120. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2017 |
| Impact | This in silico design tool provides optimal design of biosynthetic parts to support higher efficiency use and support for protein mutagenesis applications. |
| URL | http://codon.synbiochem.co.uk |
| Title | PartsGenie |
| Description | A new web application for the design of reusable synthetic biology parts. PartsGenie offers simultaneous codon optimisation, RBS design, CDS RBS removal, assembly compatibility and synthesis compatibility. It is designed to bridge the gap between optimisation tools for the design of novel parts, the representation of such designs in community-developed data standards such as Synthetic Biology Open Language (SBOL), and the sharing of designs in journal-recommended data repositories (JBEI-ICE). It facilitates the design, optimisation and dissemination of reusable synthetic biology parts through a single, integrated application. PartsGenie has been used for the design of most synthetic DNA used in the SYNBIOCHEM Centre and elsewhere in the MIB and is now freely available to the wider synthetic biology community. Dobson PD, Batista-Navarro R, Ananiadou S, Mendes P, Kell DB, Swainston N. A Metabolic reaction balancing web service for computational systems biology. BMC Syst Biol. In review. Aug. 2017. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2017 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | A new design tool for the design and optimisation and dissemination of reusable synthetic biology parts in a single application. |
| URL | http://parts.synbiochem.co.uk |
| Title | RetroPath2.0 |
| Description | To expand access to diverse chemical targets we have continued to develop our retrosynthesis approach that explores the chemical biosynthetic space. RetroPath2.0 provides an automated open source workflow based on generalized reaction rules that performs retrosynthesis search from chassis to target through an efficient and well-controlled protocol. Its ease of use and the versatility of its applications make this tool a valuable addition to the biological engineer workbench. We demonstrated its application for the identification of alternative biosynthetic routes through enzyme promiscuity. Furthermore, we demonstrated its ability to perform inverse molecular design and search bioactive molecules over chemical space, providing an automated procedure for chemical target prioritization. Delépine B, Duigou T, Carbonell P, Faulon JL. (2017). RetroPath2.0: A retrosynthesis workflow for metabolic engineers. Metabolic Engineering, 45, 158-70. Koch M, Duigou T, Carbonell P, Faulon JL. (2017). Molecular structures enumeration and virtual screening in the chemical space with RetroPath2.0. Journal of Cheminformatics, 9(1):64. Lopez O, Pastor M, Sanz F, Carbonell P. (2018). Hepatotoxicity prediction by systems biology modelling of disturbed metabolic pathways using gene expression data. Methods in Molecular Biology, volume "Computational Toxicology", In press. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2017 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | This new in silico design tool explores chemical biosynthetic space to identify optimum biosynthetic routes and associated enzymes for new synthetic gene pathway design that will enable biosynthetic routes towards the synthesis of chemical compounds in microorganisms. |
| URL | http://www.myexperiment.org/workflows/4987.html |
| Title | Selenzyme |
| Description | The online enzyme selection tool for metabolic pathway design, Selenzyme, is helping us to mine candidate enzyme sequences for any desired target reaction or set of reactions in a pathway. The tool combines multiple data sources and screening of target reactions not necessarily existing in databases, allowing the search for alternative routes or pathways leading to non-natural products. Selenzyme uses our biochem4j graph database as its main data source. Selenzyme also provides bespoke sequence selection for automated workflows where a resulting pathway design is submitted to the next stage of the pipeline. Carbonell P, Wong J, Swainston N, Takano E, Turner NJ, Scrutton NS, Kell DB, Breitling R, Faulon JL. Selenzyme: Enzyme selection tool for pathway design. Bioinformatics. Accepted. Sept. 2017. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2017 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | This in silico design tool is providing the Centre with alternative enzyme pathways for the production of natural and non-natural products in our biosynthetic production lines. |
| URL | http://selenzyme.synbiochem.co.uk |
| Title | SensiPath |
| Description | SensiPath (http://sensipath.micalis.fr/): web server (co-developed with Micalis/INRA) to identify putative biochemical transformations of our target compounds to allow identification of easily detectable compounds for screening and identification of potential biosensors. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2016 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | New in silico modelling tool for identification of biochemical transformations made available for wider use. |
| URL | http://sensipath.micalis.fr/ |
| Company Name | C3 Biotechnologies Ltd |
| Description | A licensing company for technology that enables production of bio-propane |
| Year Established | 2015 |
| Impact | None yet - too early |
| Company Name | IMPERAGEN LIMITED |
| Description | A spin-out company from the University of Manchester founded by a team of enzyme engineers and computational biologists to build a platform that brings together advances in enzyme simulation, AI, synthetic biology and automation. One of the Co-Founders is Andrew Currin who was a Senior Experimental officer working on the SYNBIOCHEM grant. |
| Year Established | 2021 |
| Impact | This company has just set up labs in Manchester science park with major investment to recruit and develop the expert team. |
| Website | https://imperagen.com/ |
| Company Name | MANCHESTER BIOFACTORY LIMITED |
| Description | Manchester BioFactory aim is to provide rapid discovery and engineering of high value proteins and enzymes for the biotechnology industry. This spin out was formed by one of the SYNBIOCHEM CoI's and two of the Senior Experimental Officers with another Manchester PDRA. |
| Year Established | 2019 |
| Impact | None as yet. |
| Website | https://mcr.bio/ |
| Description | 2021 iGEM Manchester team supervisor |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Undergraduate students |
| Results and Impact | More than 300 UG and more than 100 researcher attended the iGEM jamboree where we presented our project to bring awareness and discussions in synthetic biology. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://2021.igem.org/Team:Manchester |
| Description | American association for the advancement of science, Seattle, WA USA. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | SYNBIOCHEM representation at this international conference by our Responsible Research and Innovation team. This conference is advertised as the Worlds largest general scientific gathering. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018,2019,2020 |
| URL | https://www.aaas.org/ |
| Description | Biochemical society online meeting |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Mark Dunstan presented a talk at the Biochemical society Synthetic Biology series topic of Industrial Biotechnology in November 2020 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | Blog posts |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The secretive 'second world' of human synthetic biology (A. Balmer, The Guardian, 18/05/16); Synthetic Biology: Reshaping the Future (PLOS SynBio Blog 1/16) https://t.co/v91JxkPFWf. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| URL | https://www.theguardian.com/science/political-science/2016/may/18/the-secretive-second-world-of-huma... |
| Description | British Science Week |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | SYNBIOCHEM researchers and our iGEM team hosted an interactive demonstration of fragrance compounds at the UoM annual British Science Week fair (14-17/03/17) and engaged visitors (~1100 students, ages 9 - 14) with the potential of synthetic biology approaches for green and sustainable chemical manufacture. Our RRI researchers also ran a stand collecting opinions on the production of menthol using synthetic biology (Annex 7). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | College presentation Japan |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | Senior Experimental Officer, Adrian Jervis employed on the SYNBIOCHEM grant delivered a talk and Q&A session to Hiroo Gakuen Junior and High School pupils, Japan. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| Description | EPS Big Green Gathering |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | The Big Green Gathering was hosted in North Campus by the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences on 8th March 2016. The event sought to engage ~150 members of the public with sustainable research initiatives from across the faculty, through the use of infographics designed by researchers. The submission by the MIB, detailing the area of industrial biotechnology and including examples of research from the institute, won 1st prize in the popular votes across all three categories: most informative, most creative and most interesting. Researchers from the MIB visited Levenshulme High School on 15th March 2016 to take part in their annual science exhibition. Around 400 key stage 3 and 4 students were engaged with the research conducted at Manchester in the field of glycoscience through arts and crafts style building of glycans and the popular cell invaders video game. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| Description | ESOF |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | ESOF - EuroScience Open Forum 2016 was held in Manchester. SYNBIOCHEM hosted: Science program (joint with EU programme SYNENERGENE) - Synthetic Biology and the new bio-industrial revolution - how will we ensure Responsible Research and Innovation - attended by approx. 70 people with 4 science talks followed by round table discussions. Science to Business program - Synthetic Biology - the pathway to commercialisation. panel discussion with industry leads (GSK, Synthace, ThermoFisher, SynBiCite, BioBricks Foundation). Early Career Researcher event in the MIB - Perspectives on Synthetic Biology. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| URL | http://www.esof.eu/ |
| Description | ESOF sessions |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | A science programme of short talks and dialogue session - "Will synthetic biology deliver the new Bio-industrial revolution - and how can we ensure Responsible Research and Innovation?". This session was a joint venture between SYNBIOCHEM and SYNENERGEN (EU FP7 RRI consortium). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| URL | http://manchester2016.esof.eu/en/the-programme/science-programme.html |
| Description | ESOF sessions |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | A Science to Business Programme as part of the Euro Science Open Forum (Manchester 2016), "SynBio - the pathway to commercialization". This was a panel debate session with industry representatives and academic input. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| URL | http://manchester2016.esof.eu/en/the-programme/science-to-business-programme.html |
| Description | ESOF sessions |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Half-day workshop "Opening doors on RRI" provided a unique discussion platform on putting RRI policies into practice and brought together experts from across the EU. It featured debates and practical workshops. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| URL | http://manchester2016.esof.eu/en/the-programme/responsible-research-and-innovation.html |
| Description | Future Biomanufacturing Research Hub Launch Event |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Future Biomanufacturing Research Hub Launch Event |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Future Biomanufacturing Research Hub hosted seminar - The Biotechnology of Brewing (Prof Charles Bamford) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Future Biomanufacturing Research Hub hosted seminar (online) - The Biotechnology of Brewing (Prof Charles Bamford) |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-biotechnology-of-brewing-tickets-113282416758 |
| Description | Global BioFoundry Alliance member, SYNBIOCHEM was a founding member. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Biofoundries provide an integrated infrastructure to enable the rapid design, construction, and testing of genetically reprogrammed organisms for biotechnology applications and research. Many biofoundries are being built and a Global Biofoundry Alliance has recently been established to coordinate activities worldwide. A number of working groups have been established to expand biotechnology development capacities. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018,2019,2020 |
| URL | https://biofoundries.org/ |
| Description | Greater Manchester Industrial Strategy launch event |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Greater Manchester Industrial Strategy launch event, Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, 13th June 2019 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://www.gov.uk/government/news/bio-tech-gets-boost-with-new-local-industrial-strategy-for-greate... |
| Description | MIB Open Day Stands/Tours |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | The Manchester Institute of Biotechnology Open Day provides an interactive science event open to schools and colleges across the North West. SYNBIOCHEM hosted an interactive stand and provided laboratory demonstrations that showcased the D/B/T pipeline at this years event (23/11/18) to approx. 160 A' Level students. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | MIB Open Day Stands/Tours |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | The Manchester Institute of Biotechnology Open Day provides an interactive science event open to schools and colleges across the North West. SYNBIOCHEM hosted an interactive stand and provided laboratory demonstrations that showcased the D/B/T pipeline at this years event (24/11/17) to approx. 180 A' Level students. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015,2016,2017,2018 |
| Description | Multi-Lingual Science |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | The Centre, supported by Dr Nick Weise (Lecturer, E-Learning Lead, MIB) has been involved with a number of Multilingual Manchester interactions at which our scientists delivered interactive science sessions at language schools at the weekend. A second visit to the local supplementary language Huaxia Mandarin School (19/03/17) introduced students to the chemistry of enzymes and sugars in Mandarin Chinese (Yan, Kwok, Weise and Huang, 19/03/17). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | NSEW Science Fair |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | Members of research group presented exhibit on topics of enzymes and proteins. Event was well received by both students and their teachers and seemed to inspire interest in the subject. Additional stand on SynBio for flavours and fragrances hosted by the iGEM team (2016) No defined impacts realised to date |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2012,2013,2014,2015,2016 |
| Description | NTI Biosecurity Innovation and Risk Reduction Initiative - P Cai |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Prof. Cai has participated in continued activity with the Biosecurity Innovation and Risk reduction initiative |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | https://www.nti.org/about/projects/fostering-biosecurity-innovation-and-risk-reduction/event/biosecu... |
| Description | New Scientist Live |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | A stand on a stand on DNA and Synthetic Biology of Fragrances at the New Scientist Live which is an award-winning, mind-blowing festival of ideas and discoveries for everyone curious about science and why it matters. For four days in September, it transforms London, the world's most exciting capital city, into the most exciting place in the universe. More than 140 speakers and 100 exhibitors come together in one venue to create an unrivalled atmosphere and energy, packed with thought-provoking talks, ground-breaking discoveries, interactive experiences, workshops and performances. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | https://live.newscientist.com/ |
| Description | New Statesman and MIB Webinar: Biotechnology - The Catalyst for a Sustainable Future |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Panel discussion with George Freeman MP, Dr Yvonne Armitage, Professor Lionel Clarke, Professor Rob Field and Jon Bernstein. Accompanied by a magazine produced with an article by N Scrutton and K Malone "Biomanufacturing: a path to sustainable economic recovery". |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://www.newstatesman.com/2020/06/new-statesman-and-mib-webinar-biotechnology-catalyst-sustainabl... |
| Description | Online broadcast research presentation Fuels for Seawater |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Online research presentation (BioChannel TV) on Fuels for Seawater |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://video.ibm.com/recorded/128525699 |
| Description | Online research presentation Next Generation Biomanufacturing for the Bio-Revolution: An International Opportunity |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | On December 3, 2020 Ontario Genomics in partnership with Policy Horizons Canada and SynBio Canada presented as part of the third Canada's Bio-Revolution Webinar Series, "Next Generation Biomanufacturing for the Bio-Revolution: An International Opportunity" |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://vimeo.com/487094282 |
| Description | Podcast - 'Lefteris asks science - Edition 13 - How do we use spider silk? (With Dr. Aled Roberts)' |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Podcast - 'Lefteris asks science - Edition 13 - How do we use spider silk? With Dr. Aled Roberts' (Research Fellow, Future Biomanufacturing Research Hub) |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://www.lefterisasks.com/episode/lefteris-asks-science-edition-13-how-do-we-use-spider-silk-with... |
| Description | Pop-up stands on Menthol |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Menthol pop-up stands were presented by the SYNBIOCHEM RRI team at 1) The Body Experience (Manchester Museum, 18/03/2017( mainly attracted young families) and British Science week (13-17/03/17) to approx. 1000 school children.provided an opportunity to bring science into public spaces with diverse participants. These stalls invited passers-by to interact with the taste, smell, sight and touch of menthol products. Participants shared comments about their experiences with menthol products, offered thoughts about different ways of producing menthol, and views on menthol made through synthetic biology were captured (approximately 150 people stopped by providing approx. 270 postcard responses). Some people's reactions to synthetic biology focused on the use of E. coli and there were concerns that using bacteria could be problematic, whilst others were not personally worried about genetic engineering, but thought there were "other people" who would not like consumer products that were genetically engineered. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | RI Talk - fuels of the future |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Manchester University Alumni Event: Hear from our panel of leading academics from the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology as they explore the challenges of developing the fuels of the future, the solutions we are delivering and why Manchester is leading the world in industrial biotechnology. One of the main challenges our society faces is the dwindling level of oil reserves which we not only depend upon for transport fuels, but also plastics, lubricants and a wide range of petrochemicals. As the 21st century progresses, and we move towards more bio-based economies, we need solutions for the manufacture of chemicals that are smarter, more predictable and more sustainable. From underpinning strategic research to the transfer of technology into the marketplace, The University of Manchester has a range of worldclass activities supporting the need for solutions that can play their part in meeting the global energy challenge. Just as Manchester was at the heart of the Industrial Revolution, The University of Manchester is now leading the way, both nationally and across Europe, towards a bio-industrial revolution. Panel: Professor Nigel Scrutton (Chair), Professor of Enzymology and Biophysical Chemistry, Professor David Leys, Professor of Structural Biology, Professor Eriko Takano, Professor of Synthetic Biology Venue: The Royal Institution of Great Britain, London |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Research presentation Biocatalyst engineering and synthetic biology platforms for monoterpene production in E. coli |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Undergraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Guest lecture for undergraduates at the Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences (Rotterdam, Netherlands) on the 'Biocatalyst engineering and synthetic biology platforms for monoterpene production in E. coli'. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | Research presentation Microbial cell factories - engineering biology for chemicals production |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Online research presentation, at UK Catalysis Hub webinar on 'Microbial cell factories - engineering biology for chemicals production'. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://ukcatalysishub.co.uk/microbial-cell-factories-engineering-biology-for-chemicals-production/ |
| Description | ScienceX |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Scientists and engineers from the University of Manchester took over the various attractions in and around the Trafford Centre on 23rd and 24th April 2016 as part of their Science Extravaganza or ScienceX. With exhibits and activities in the main building, LEGOLAND, Chill Factore and the Sealife Centre an estimated 10,000 shoppers were engaged throughout the weekend as a non-traditional science outreach audience. Researchers from the MIB/SYNBIOCHEM were involved in coordination of and participation in ocean acidification demonstrations at the aquarium, chemistry of ice experiments at the artificial ski slope and various biotechnology-related exhibits in the main shopping areas. One participant even wrote on their feedback form that the part of the day they enjoyed the most was the main demonstration stand from the MIB: |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| Description | ScienceX Trafford Shopping Centre |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | As part of the UoM Faculty of Science and Engineering's strategy to engage non-traditional audiences researchers once again took over the Trafford shopping Centre (22-23/04/17) to talk to members of the general public about science and engineering. SYNBIOCHEM representatives hosted an interactive stand at the SEALIFE Centre that used simple experiments and leaflets to inform visitors about ocean acidification and provided the opportunity to learn about how the use of biotechnology could reduce atmospheric CO2 levels. SYNBIOCHEM Social science researchers engaged shoppers with synthetic biology research on menthol production. The opinions and queries received are being used as part of the Centre's RRI initiative to involve the public in the scientific development process. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | ScienceX Trafford Shopping Centre |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Science stands at the Trafford Centre over the weekend in April 2018 used to communicate SYNBIOCHEM research and synthetic biology/Biotechnology in general. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Scientific and technological challenges in defining a new paradigm for sustainable biomaterials. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | SYNBIOCHEM worked closely with Dstl and the Office for Naval Research Global (ONRG) to deliver a workshop (MIB, 16-17/05/17) that explored the "Scientific and Technological challenges in defining a new paradigm for sustainable biomaterials". The meeting set out to discuss and identify the opportunities that SynBio can bring to the materials arena. The report helped define a roadmap for the development of infrastructure and expertise for the discovery, assembly and integration of widely diverse biomaterials and their composites, and the establishment of revolutionary new ways for biomaterials production and evaluation. This road map is being used to take this convergence of SynBio and materials fields forward and develop funding for this area. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | SynBiTECH 2020 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | SynbiTECH Virtual 2020 is Europe's only international synthetic biology conference for innovators and experts in synthetic biology research, commercialisation, investment and policymaking. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://www.synbitech.com |
| Description | Synthetic Biology Leadership Council, Science and Technology sub-committee, Scrutton sits on this committee with SYNBIOCHEM providing information on activities. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The UK Government established the Synthetic Biology Leadership Council (SBLC) to provide a steering structure governance body to assess progress and update recommendations and shape priorities for future implementation of the synthetic biology roadmap for the UK. Continued investment in Synthetic Biology. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017,2018,2019,2020 |
| URL | https://ktn-uk.co.uk/programmes/synthetic-biology-leadership-council |
| Description | TEA, LCA, SE perspectives workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Industry focused workshop explored Techno-economic, Life-cycle and Socio-economic perspectives of biomanufacturing production processes. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | UK BioIndustry Association, Engineering Biology Advisory Committee, Le Feuvre sits on this panel. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | The Engineering Biology Advisory Committee (EBAC) is composed of industry experts in engineering/synthetic biology and provides a forum for BIA members to discuss and keep abreast of the key issues associated with the rapidly increasing pace with which we can engineer biology. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018,2019,2020 |
| URL | https://www.bioindustry.org/bia-membership/advisory-committees/engineering-biology-advisory-committe... |
| Description | UKSynBio2017 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | UKSynBio17 meeting held in Manchester was organised by Takano and Le Feuvre in partnership with the Biochemical Society (27-28/11/17). This event brought together the UK SynBio community (~230 attendees) with a fantastic line up of international keynote speakers from academia and industry, 19 selected short talks and 70 poster presentations. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014,2017 |
| URL | https://www.biochemistry.org/Events/tabid/379/MeetingNo/SA207/view/Conference/Default.aspx |
| Description | UKSynBio2018 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | UKSynBio conference in Bristol. Attended by approximately 10 participants from SYNBIOCHEM |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Visit by Chinese Minister of Science & Technology, Mr Wang Zhigang |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an open day or visit at my research institution |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Visit by Chinese Minister of Science & Technology, Mr Wang Zhigang |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Visit by Chris Skidmore MP, Minister for State for BEIS |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an open day or visit at my research institution |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Visit by Chris Skidmore MP, Minister for State for BEIS |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | iGEM 2020 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Undergraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Organised the Manchester iGEM team for 2020. iGEM is an annual international student competition in synthetic biology, providing a great interdisciplinary learning opportunity for our students from all faculties. This year's Manchester iGEM team worked throughout the summer in very unusual circumstances. The team project was Hipposol, aimed at producing an eco-friendly sunscreen, derived from hippopotamus sweat, in genetically engineered bacteria. They were probably the first iGEM team to successfully use computational retrosynthesis for their project, and with the help of the Manchester Business School they comprehensively explored the social and economic implications of their ideas using a Responsible Research and Innovation approach. The Manchester 2020 iGEM team won a Gold medal and was nominated for the "Best Supporting Entrepreneurship" award in this year's iGEM (Virtual) Giant Jamboree |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://2020.igem.org/Team:Manchester |
| Description | iGEM teams |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Undergraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Takano has organised the Manchester iGEM team since 2012 with Prof Rainer Breitling. The iGEM competition (International Genetically Engineered Machine competition: https://igem.org/Main_Page) is a prestigious international synthetic biology event, with more than 300 participating teams from international universities (form all over the world), who present their summer research at a Giant Jamboree in Boston. iGEM is a major opportunity for undergraduate students to acquire interdisciplinary and transferable skills and to show their achievements in an international setting. The total number of participants is well over 500 with each team having more that 10 members. Our Manchester teams have been very successful and have achieved a gold medal for four years; in 2016 they won not only the gold medal, but also scooped the special award for 'Best Computational Model' - and were also shortlisted for the 'Best Education and Public Engagement' award. We had very interesting topics from Palm oil production in E. coli to alcohol patch on skin to detect and make aware alcohol consumption. Many discussions involving NGOs(e.g. friends of the earth, green peace, alcohol anonymous) and public institutions (e.g. police, NHS hospitals, FBI) and industry (cheese makers, brewery, confectionery). All of the teams achievements have increased awareness in synthetic biology and sparked many discussion afterwards. We still receive interest for a topic which was done in 2012. More information of the Manchester teams can be found at https://igem.org/Team.cgi http://2018.igem.org/Team:Manchester http://2017.igem.org/Team:Manchester http://2016.igem.org/Team:Manchester; http://2015.igem.org/Team:Manchester-Graz; |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015,2016,2017,2018,2019,2020 |
| URL | http://synbiochem.co.uk/igem-Manchester/ |