Community BioFutures

The EBRC Community BioFutures initiative aims to build bioliteracy and engagement in the U.S. bioeconomy by empowering stakeholders and strengthening local bioeconomies through a national networking and resources infrastructure.

About

As the bioeconomy continues to grow and diversify, public engagement, and the development of a robust, inclusive workforce becomes a high priority. To increase engagement and educate the next-generation of bioeconomy participants, we need to raise awareness of its potential, from foundational engineering biology to scalable technologies and consumer-ready products, goods, and services. EBRC will contribute to this initiative by establishing a national infrastructure that supports and connects local bioeconomy stakeholders to increase engineering biology engagement and education, workforce development, and industry/economic growth, promoting nation-wide bioliteracy.

Want to engage with us or get involved? Please reach out to education@ebrc.org

Project Goals, Milestones, and Benchmarks

Project Goals and Milestones

To meet with educators, researchers, industry members, policymakers, and other stakeholders to identify the strengths of local bioeconomies, their challenges, and the resources necessary for robust networks;
To facilitate discussions and collaboration between stakeholders by holding national and regional workshops. These workshops will help us to develop tools, platforms, and connections that foster visibility, growth, and sustainability of local bioeconomy networks and national bioliteracy; and
To gather “Success Stories” about how local bioeconomies serve their communities to build bioliteracy.

Current Benchmarks

Gathering information (strengths, weaknesses, resources) on local bioeconomy networks through surveys and interviews with EBRC members and near-network community members;
Engaging with existing engineering biology and bioeconomy-related organizations throughout the U.S. to identify how to best support different bioeconomies (i.e., by exploring organization types, funding sources, participants and target audience, and programs’ goals).

Upcoming Events

Come to our first workshop, held virtually! More details to come.

Resources

Coming soon!

Resources we expect to highlight:

Publications
Success Stories!
Discussion Forum

Steering Committee

Coming Soon! If you are interested in participating in EBRC’s Community BioFutures’ Steering Committee, please contact us at education@ebrc.org

The Community BioFutures steering committee is composed of key stakeholders from industry, education, government, and other relevant sectors to provide strategic guidance and expertise on EBRC’s role in advancing nationwide bioliteracy by:

Shaping networking workshops to foster collaboration between local bioeconomies;
Planning regional or local community events (in partnership with museums, zoos, libraries, or similar entities) to increase public engagement; and
Offer general input to enhance the success of the EBRC Community BioFutures initiative.

Support

This work is currently supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation under Award Number 2341279. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Enabling Quality, Measurable Synthetic DNA Sequence Screening

This project aims to improve DNA synthesis screening by enabling the development of better tools and mechanisms for screening performance evaluation. Synthetic DNA enables life sciences research that can be applied to pressing societal challenges across many sectors, but could also be used in the development of biological parts, systems, or organisms that cause great harm to human, public, or environmental health. Many companies that produce and sell synthetic DNA screen ordered sequences to prevent customers from inappropriately accessing Sequences of Concern (SOCs). However, they lack tools to evaluate the performance of their screening systems. Such tools are crucial as technical capabilities in engineering biology, artificial intelligence, and other areas grow.

End-to-End Stress Testing (E2EST) of DNA Synthesis Screening

DNA synthesis is a powerfully enabling capability for engineering biology to address important challenges across sectors, but as these capabilities become more accessible, the biosecurity risks they pose rises. In 2024 and 2025, EBRC, with support from Sentinel Bio, will conduct end-to-end stress testing (E2EST) of nucleic acid synthesis providers. We will use customers with different attributes and sequences with different biorisk profiles to learn about provider customer, sequence, and follow-up screening practices.

Building International Best Practices For Robust Synthetic Nucleic Acid Screening

This project aims to establish a set of internationally recognized best practices for nucleic acid synthesis screening through a coordinated global approach. By engaging with academic, industry, government, and non-profit stakeholders, this initiative will build on EBRC’s previous work to enhance biosecurity and ensure screening practices are robust and resilient to evolving technological risks.

Strengthening a Safe and Secure Nucleic Acid Synthesis Ecosystem

Publication Date: January 2025

This report presents findings, best practices, and recommendations for quality, measurable nucleic acid synthesis screening and was developed by the Engineering Biology Research Consortium (EBRC) in cooperation with the National Institute of Standards and Technology. During 2024, EBRC brought 200 stakeholders together across government, academia, industry, and civil society in a series of workshops to consider key aspects of nucleic acid synthesis screening, including Sequence of Concern database development and conformity assessment. This report provides best practices for a range of stakeholders and offers recommendations to support the adoption of screening practices and improve screening outcomes. Cross-sector collaboration will continue to be necessary to tackle screening challenges and effectively implement U.S. policy. Further, strong international partnerships will be necessary to advance quality screening around the globe (learn more).

Community BioFutures

The EBRC Community BioFutures initiative aims to build bioliteracy and engagement in the U.S. bioeconomy by empowering stakeholders and strengthening local bioeconomies through a national networking and resources infrastructure.

About

Project Goals, Milestones, and Benchmarks

Upcoming Events

Resources

Steering Committee

Support

Rixin Zhang

Tackle resource competition problems in synthetic biology, aiming to restore gene circuits’ modularity and build robust gene circuits.

sadikshya rijal

Sadikshya Rijal is pursuing her PhD in biological design from Arizona State University. She is affiliated with Dr. Xiaojun Tian’s lab, which focuses on resource allocation of gene circuits and phase separation in bacterial systems.

Enabling Quality, Measurable Synthetic DNA Sequence Screening

End-to-End Stress Testing (E2EST) of DNA Synthesis Screening

Building International Best Practices For Robust Synthetic Nucleic Acid Screening

Abigail Stringer

Strengthening a Safe and Secure Nucleic Acid Synthesis Ecosystem

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