New discovery in fabrication of cellular parts revealed

Researchers at the Centre for Synthetic Biology and Innovation (CSBI) at Imperial College in London have made a cutting-edge discovery, which may take bio-industrial technology to a new level. The study involves fabricating cellular parts within hours, rather than days.
 
Paul Freemont, professor and co-director of the Centre for Synthetic Biology and Innovation (CSBI) at Imperial College and principal co-investigator said: “Before the industrial revolution, most items were made by hand, which meant that they were slower to manufacture, more expensive to produce and limited in numbers. We are at a similar juncture in synthetic biology, having to test and build each part from scratch, which is a long and slow process. We demonstrate in our study a new method that could help to rapidly scale up the production and testing of biological parts.”
The new, quicker method does not need the time-consuming re-engineering of a cell each time a new part has to be made. Parts made up of DNA are re-engineered by scientists and put into cells to make biological factories. The new method is a step closer to solving the problem in synthetic biology, which involves the lack of parts from which to build new types of factories.
 
James Chappell, study co-author from the CSBI, said: “One of the major goals in synthetic biology is to find a way to industrialize our processes so that we can mass produce these biological factories much in the same way that industries such as car manufacturers mass produce vehicles in a factory line. This could unlock the potential of this field of science and enable us to develop much more sophisticated devices that could be used to improve many facets of society. Excitingly, our research takes us one step closer to this reality, providing a rapid way of developing new parts,” added Chappell.
 
The discovery could potentially be applied to achieve more effective drug delivery, easier mining of minerals and advances in the production of biofuels. (February 3, 2013)