Title:
Towards an Evolutionary Synthetic Biology
Towards an Evolutionary Synthetic Biology
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Authors
Gaucher, Eric A.
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Abstract
Evolution is the unifying theory behind biology, and has entered the
mainstream of computational and molecular biology as a result of
genomics. Nevertheless, evolutionary ideas today only barely
influence the practice of molecular sciences. Innovation in many
areas will be required before evolutionary analyses provide utility to
biomedicine and biotechnology. Research in our laboratory attempts to enhance our understanding of
evolutionary processes and structure-function relationships in the
long-term, while also generating novel biomolecules having
technological and therapeutic value in the short-term. If successful,
these innovations will add utility to genome sequence data far beyond
that found in comparative genomics. Using information extracted
from molecular evolutionary analyses to guide the engineering of
proteins is an innovative addition to existing methods. If
evolution-guided engineering can deliver biomolecular properties
not otherwise attainable with traditional engineering/directed
evolution techniques, then this approach will have wide utility. The above activities form the foundation of our attempt to develop an
evolutionary synthetic biology. We are energized by the prospect of
joining evolutionary biology and synthetic biology. Synthetic biology
appears to mean different things to different scientific disciplines. Surprisingly, however, biologists seem to have taken a backseat to
chemists and engineers in the development of this field. It seems
apparent that synthetic biology would stand to benefit if molecular
evolution contributed to its progress.
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Date Issued
2009-11-10
Extent
61:52 minutes
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Lecture