Synthetic biology: Putting synthesis into biology

Synthetic biology is the design of novel or improved biological systems using engineering principles. It is a rapidly growing area with broad applications in medical, chemical, food, and agricultural industries. In this talk, I will briefly discuss the challenges and opportunities in synthetic biology and highlight our recent work in the development and application of novel foundational synthetic biology tools. Specifically, I will introduce three interrelated stories, including: (1) development of the Illinois Biological Foundry for Advanced Biomanufacturing (iBioFAB) for next-generation synthetic biology applications; (2) development of new strategies and tools for discovery of novel natural products from genomes and metagenomes; and (3) development of genome-scale engineering tools for rapid metabolic engineering applications.