The Frankencell saga continues

The Frankencell saga we started last year (“Creating-altering life – the Frankencell”) continued after the long awaited visit to Montreal of UK´s Synthetic Biology champion former Minister David Willetts and this third episode discusses last week’s first UK-Canada Synthetic Biology Workshop. British Consul General Nick Baker opened this two-day event in Montreal hosted by Concordia University.

It brought together Canadian researchers, companies and funding agencies with UK key specialists from BBSRC, Biosciences KTN, University of Nottingham Synthetic Biology Research Centre, SynthSys (Genome Foundry) from University of Edinburgh and Imperial College´s Centre for Synthetic Biology and Innovation (CsynBI) and invited guests from the United States – including renowned antimalarial company Amyris and BP Biofuels. You can have a look at the scientific programme following this link.

The attendees worked on different themes but mainly in framing Synthetic Biology research through the inspirational UK Synthetic Biology Roadmap, and commercial opportunities (expected to grow to $30billion by 2020). By working together, these world leaders in synthetic biology will increase the scope of their individual research and look forward to new advances in a wide range of themes including biofuels, vaccines, pharmaceuticals and environmental challenges. It was also discussed that providing the opportunity for regular graduate student and young professional exchanges will help create a new generation of exceptional scientists.

Synthetic biology as a field is still in its early stages with its most promising potential benefits or indeed its challenges not yet realised. The UK was amongst the first to recognise and respond to the opportunities and challenges raised by synthetic biology. Professor Richard Kitney from CsynBI said “that the US, UK and China — in that order — are the world’s synthetic biology leaders, but there is plenty of room for Canada”.

We had a wonderful time together and look forward to more international and interdisciplinary collaborations like this one.