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Team:UCL E/Vision
From 2013.igem.org
Synthetic Biology Promises
We believe in the potential of synthetic biology as a responsible force for good. The field is routinely mentioned as one of the most important emerging technologies that is likely to make a substantial impact in medicine, environmental remediation, agriculture, architecture and much more. Great examples that foreshadow what Synthetic Biology could become are Jay Keasling's Antimalarial drug or the brilliant FREDsense biosensors.
The BioBricks Foundation has done tremendous work in opening up Synthetic Biology to researchers around the world and iGEM in particular is inspiring and educating the synthetic biologists of the future.
How We Can Deliver
Our ability to keep the promises of Synthetic Biology will depend on the amount of talented people that can contribute. The tools and supplies for Synthetic Biology are still prohibitively expensive. This excludes all but the leading universities and companies from becoming involved.
In order to deliver on the potential, we need to radically increase access to working in Synthetic Biology. iGEM again is leading the way by expanding towards high schools and citizen science. But for, the tools of the trade have to become widely accessible.Accessibility includes affordability, but it goes beyond it. This is where we come in. We have dedicated our organisation to the creation the accessible tools necessary to make synthetic biology as inclusive and powerful as possible. We want to contribute to the infrastructure that enables the growth of the field, so that in a few years we have not five or fifteen examples of real world Synthetic Biology applications, but hundreds or thousands.
The First Step
Ultimately, we want to provide tools that enable the synthetic biologist to think about functionality of the system and its social and ethical implications, without having to worry about cost or restrictions of biology.
