News: Synthetic Biology

This post contains links to news articles concerned with synthetic biology: A Life of Its Own: Where will synthetic biology lead us? While Darwin observed evolution, synthetic biologists are learning to control it Hacking DNA Adventures in Synthetic Biology SG Biofuels Collaborates with Life Technologies for the Development of Jatropha as Sustainable Biofuel Broad Consensus [...]

Nature Biotechnology Focus on Synthetic Biology

The January 2010 issue of Nature features several pieces about synthetic biology. To access click here The December 2009 issue of Nature Biotechnology has a Focus on Synthetic Biology. The pap investigate a range of issues including intellectual property, the definition of synthetic biology, safety, regulation and the relationship with policy. To be taken to [...]

ISAB Code of Conduct for Synthetic Biology

The International Association of Synthetic Biology (IASB) has released a code of conduct for gene synthesis (click here for the press release). The Code, the first concerned with synthetic biology, details best practice for ethical conduct in such areas as customer screening and DNA sequence screening, and gene synthesis. For more information click here and/or here

What is Synthetic Biology?

SynBio has several definitions, tools and approaches. A NEST high-level expert group has defined SynBio as: “[T]he engineering of biology: the synthesis of complex, biologically based (or inspired) systems which display functions that do not exist in nature. This engineering perspective may be applied at all levels of the hierarchy of biological structures…. In essence, [...]

Synthetic Biology: Hope and Hype?

Synbio lectures in November, 2010, Hungary November 18, 2010 Dr. József Kovács will give two lectures on bioethics and the ethics of synthehic biology in Hungary. Details bellow (in Hungarian): Dr. Kovács József: Orvosetika–bioetika. El?adás az Óbudai San Marco Szabadegyetemen 2010. november 15.-én 18.00-20.00 között. (Helyszín: Óbudai Kulturális Központ, 1032. Budapest, San Marco u. 81. [...]

SYBHEL’s Objectives

Although developments in SynBio have progressed hand-in-hand with an awareness of ethical issues, it is time to consider some of the specificities of innovation in SynBio and the ethical issues these will generate. An area of particular interest is the planned applications of SynBio for human health and well-being. Specific issues on this topic to [...]

Where does SYBHEL start?

Ethical debates on SynBio have so far identified and initially explored some of the over-arching moral complexities that will arise from this promising technology. There is now a need for these ethical debates to change and develop to undertake a more specific and detailed analysis of the specific applications of SynBio, in this case for [...]

The potential benefits of SynBio for health care

SynBio may radically alter how health care is researched, managed and delivered. For example, synthetic synthesis of anti-malarial drugs may soon be possible. US researchers have built a new metabolic pathway in yeast and E. coli using genes from three separate organisms to create a bacterial strain that can produce amorphadiene, a pre-cursor to artemisinin [...]

SYBHEL Concept and project objectives

Throughout the recent history of scientific research and biomedicine, there has been criticism that ethical analyses have lagged behind the pace of research. The opportunity to address a new technology like SynBio from an ethical perspective early in its development is transient and should not be missed. Indeed, the European Commission has recognised that: “It [...]

Ethics research and SynBio

With a technology as recent as SynBio, it is not surprising that ethical deliberation of implications is still emerging. However literature on SynBioEthics is constantly increasing. These publications are supplemented by SynBio researchers’ awareness of ethical issues, with ethics sessions at all annual Synthetic Biology conferences to date. In 2006, attendees at this conference considered [...]