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Engineering synergy in biotechnology

Nature Chemical Biology volume 10, pages 319–322 (2014)Cite this article

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Biotechnology is a central focus in efforts to provide sustainable solutions for the provision of fuels, chemicals and materials. On the basis of a recent open discussion, we summarize the development of this field, highlighting the distinct but complementary approaches provided by metabolic engineering and synthetic biology for the creation of efficient cell factories to convert biomass and other feedstocks to desired chemicals.

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Figure 1: Illustration of how systems biology impacts both synthetic biology and metabolic engineering.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jens Nielsen, Jay Keasling, Sang Yup Lee and Bernhard Palsson are at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability, Technical University of Denmark, Hørsholm, Denmark.,

    Jens Nielsen, Jay Keasling, Sang Yup Lee & Bernhard Palsson

  2. Jens Nielsen is also at the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden, and the Science for Life Laboratory, Royal Institute of Technology, Solna, Sweden.,

    Jens Nielsen

  3. the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the Department of Bioengineering, the Physical Biosciences Division, Jay Keasling is also at the Joint Bioenergy Institute, Emeryville, California, USA, University of California–Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, USA, and the Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (SynBERC), Berkeley, California, USA.,

    Jay Keasling

  4. Sang Yup Lee is also at the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, KAIST, Daejeon, Korea.,

    Sang Yup Lee

  5. Bernhard Palsson is also at the Department of Bioengineering, University of California–San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA.,

    Bernhard Palsson

  6. Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering, Martin Fussenegger is at ETH Zurich, Basel, Switzerland.,

    Martin Fussenegger

  7. James C. Liao is at the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California–Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA.,

    James C Liao

  8. Kristala Prather is at the Department of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.,

    Kristala Prather

  9. Kristala Prather is also at the Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (SynBERC), Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.,

    Kristala Prather

Authors
  1. Jens Nielsen
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  2. Martin Fussenegger
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  3. Jay Keasling
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  4. Sang Yup Lee
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  5. James C Liao
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  6. Kristala Prather
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  7. Bernhard Palsson
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jens Nielsen.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Nielsen, J., Fussenegger, M., Keasling, J. et al. Engineering synergy in biotechnology. Nat Chem Biol 10, 319–322 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchembio.1519

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