In this episode of The Big Experiment, we are live, recording from the Synthetic Biology UK 2024 conference hosted by the Biochemical Society, at Hinxton Hall near Cambridge, home of the famous Genome Campus.

Synthetic biology is the practice of manipulating biology to achieve outcomes that don’t occur naturally or in some cases are not naturally possible.

Common examples include producing new proteins for therapeutic use, but there are many other applications of lab-derived augmentation of living things.

These include making meat without killing animals, altering plant photosynthesis to improve crop production, using bacteria to clean up contaminated soils, making new vaccines and antibiotics before we need them, and many more.

See here for the Biochemical Society’s useful resource page on this subject, which has lots of articles and info: Synthetic Biology.

There were too many fantastic applications to cover in one show, but I hope this episode gives you an idea of the potential. I take my roving microphone on a tour of the event, talking to researchers showcasing their work. We hear about a wide range of studies including creating affordable CRISPR diagnostics, engineering synthetic microbial communities for enhanced bio-production, and much more.

This episode showcases the future of synthetic biology and some of the great advances we can expect. In some cases, as you’ll hear, I hope we don’t ever need to use them.

It also highlights some amazingly talented young scientists at the coalface of scientific discovery. The professors of tomorrow.

“It’s amazing we can do things in the lab that evolution hasn’t thought of.” – Mark

You’ll hear about:

01:10 - What is synthetic biology?
04:06 - Therapeutics from engineering biology: how and why
08:11 - Ana Pascual Cambridge Uni - CRISPR diagnostics for all?
12:36 - Casey Chen UCL - Making new microbial communities
15:58 - Mark's poster tour interlude
19:48 - Gabrielle Admans Cambridge Uni - Predicting vaccines before pandemics
22:08 - Giuliano Bonfa, Italian Inst Tech - T-rEx fights solid tumours?
25:42 - Max Armitage Nottingham Uni - Finding new antibiotics

Connect with the Biochemical Society:

Website - https://www.biochemistry.org/

X - https://x.com/BiochemSoc

Connect with me:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markdavison100/

If you need any lab equipment:

Grant Instruments: https://www.grantinstruments.com/

Grant Instruments on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/grant-instruments-cambridge-ltd/