How robots could solve the antibiotics production crisis
The World Health Organisation, has highlighted a lack of new antibiotics in development which is leading to a crisis in antibiotic production and our ability to tackle infections. However, cutting-edge technology gives us a chink of hope in what could otherwise be seen as an intractable problem...
iGEM 2017 Manchester success at the Giant Jamboree!
Manchester iGEM 2017 Awarded Gold at the Giant Jamboree! : This year our team of undergraduate students from the University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University are working on a project that aims to engineer a bacterium that can take up and store increased levels of phosphate...
Breakthrough in pharmaceuticals production with new enzyme discovery
Scientists have discovered a new enzyme that will make a drug used to treat Parkinson’s disease cheaper and quicker to produce. Researchers at the Universities of Manchester and York found the enzyme in Aspergillus oryzae, a kind of fungus used for making soy sauce. The discovery, ‘A reductive...
New species of yeast could help beer brewers reach new heights
Researchers at the University of Manchester have discovered a new species of yeast that could help brewers create better lager. Working in collaboration with the National Collection of Yeast Cultures (NCYC), the team say it is a new of member of the Saccharomyces family and is closely related to...
RRI – MAKING SENSE OF MENTHOL
Making Sense of Menthol by Robert Meckin, Research Associate, SYNBIOCHEM RRI Group, March 2017 Sketch by Lynne Chapman, Artist in Residence at the Morgan Centre for Research into Everyday Lives Old-fashioned sweets, mouthwash at the dentists, aromatic chewing gums, muscle rubs, medicinal vapour...
Synthetic Biology UK 2017
27-28th November 2017, Manchester Conference Centre, UK. The SynBio UK conference aims to showcase UK Synthetic Biology research and to create a focal point for the community, embracing its diversity and fostering its growth and its engagement with society. Held in the vibrant city of Manchester,...
C3 Bio-Technologies Ltd
A spin out company, C3 Bio-Technologies Ltd, was incorporated to utilise synthetic biology to facilitate the production of propane. The company seeks to develop an economically-sustainable manufacturing process for full-scale bio-propane production and brings together two long-standing...
SpeedyGenes gene synthesis method
A new chapter in Methods Mol. Biol. (Currin et al, 2017. Vol 1472, 63-78) describes our SpeedyGenes method that allows the assembly of DNA sequences with fewer errors and its use to encode extensive, statistically designed sequence variation at any position in the sequence to generate diverse yet...
Microbial cell factories for the production of high-value pharmaceuticals
A new H2020 funded project TOPCAPI, involving 8 academic and industry partners from 4 different countries (led by Prof. Takano) will exploit the natural fabrication power of actinomycetes as microbial cell factories to produce high-value pharmaceutical ingredients, in particular the starter...
Biosynthesis of semi-synthetic antibiotics
A major new collaboration between members of SYNBIOCHEM and the John Innes Centre, funded by BBRSC/EPSRC and Innovate UK, will explore SynBio approaches for the total biosynthesis of semi-synthetic antibiotics. Natural products are molecules typically produced by plants and microorganisms that...