News
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August 24, 2020
Activation of Energy Metabolism through Growth Media Reformulation Enables a 24-Hour Workflow for Cell-Free Expression
Max Z. Levine, Byungcheol So, Alissa C. Mullin, Rob Fanter, Kayla Dillard, Katharine R. Watts, Michael R. La Frano, and Javin P. Oza. ACS Synthetic Biology.
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August 20, 2020
You get what you screen for: on the value of fermentation characterization in high-throughput strain improvements in industrial settings
Maren Wehrs, Alexander de Beaumont-Felt, Alexi Goranov, Patrick Harrigan, Stefan de Kok, Sarah Lieder, Jim Vallandingham & Kristina Tyner. Journal of Industrial Microbiology & Biotechnology.
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August 19, 2020
The Genetic Code Kit: An Open-Source Cell-Free Platform for Biochemical and Biotechnology Education
Layne C. Williams, Nicole E. Gregorio, Byungcheol So, Wesley Y. Kao, Alan L. Kiste, Pratish A. Patel, Katharine R. Watts and Javin P. Oza. Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology.
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July 13, 2020
Automated design of thousands of nonrepetitive parts for engineering stable genetic systems
Ayaan Hossain, Eriberto Lopez, Sean M. Halper, Daniel P. Cetnar, Alexander C. Reis, Devin Strickland, Eric Klavins & Howard M. Salis. Nature Biotechnology.
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June 16, 2020
YouTube resources for synthetic biology education
Publication Date: September 2019 | Originally published in Synthetic Biology.
EBRC aims to serve as a resource for disseminating educational content and resources for engineering/synthetic biology. This article shares information about the compilation of publicly produced and accessible videos on YouTube for audiences interested in learning more about the field. Six playlists are described in the publication: Synthetic biology overview, Synthetic biology concepts, Synthetic biology teaching or public lectures, Synthetic biology research lectures, Synthetic biology in the lab, and iGEM. These playlists and the resulting publication were created by Aaron Dy, a former EBRC Student and Postdoc Association member, to share with the EBRC and wider community.
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June 11, 2020
Open Postdoc Positions (2020)
EBRC and UC Berkeley are seeking postdoctoral scholars interested in science policy. Postdocs will leverage their previous training to work with EBRC programs and to conduct an individual research project in one of EBRC’s focus areas. Applications are accepted on an ongoing basis with positions open in the last summer / early fall 2020.
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June 8, 2020
Member Communications Update
Dear Colleagues,
Over the past months, EBRC has been considering ways to improve communication with the membership and find ways to have meaningful engagements in the absence of in person interactions. Along with this, we’ve been considering ways to make it easier to engage in conversations with colleagues in EBRC, especially within our four focus areas.
The BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front)
Trello: We will discontinue using Trello w/ the membership. Those of you on current boards will be removed in the coming days. Please note that some previously sent calendar invites may contain links that may be inactive.
Slack: All EBRC members are invited to join our Slack workspace. Colleagues from industry and government can join Slack at this link using your institutional email address. Individual members are automatically invited. If the email address you primarily use is not listed or you have any other issues, please contact helix@ebrc.org.
Key elements of the EBRC Slack workspace:
- The EBRC Slack is open to EBRC Individual Members (not students / postdocs) and employees from EBRC Member Companies & Government agencies. EBRC Student & Postdoc Association leadership (SPA Board) are the only lab members on Slack.
- EBRC Council & Working Group members are strongly encouraged to join. Discussion and links around working topics will be included in relevant channels.
- Interact with colleagues across the engineering biology ecosystem between events.
- For further details see our EBRC Slack one-pager.
Google: We will continue to use G Suite (Drive, Docs, Sheets) as we have been.
Email Newsletter: We’re starting a regular monthly newsletter.
More Detail:
Trello: We currently use Trello extensively with the EBRC staff, but it’s seen mixed use with the working groups and committees. The EBRC Slack workspace is intended to replace Trello’s functionality as a platform for discussion, some working group announcements, and links to pertinent documents.
G Suite: EBRC pays for G Suite services (at ebrc.org) and we use it extensively. We plan to keep using it with the working groups and committees and moving some of the positive aspects of Trello to it. For example, dynamic meeting agendas can be captured in a Google Doc vs. Trello card. These documents will be linked in Slack. See next.
Slack: Engagement across the membership, and with the EBRC staff, is important. We would like to try to enable more dialog across the membership on relevant topics. We tried to use Trello cards for this, but it hasn’t worked as robustly as we’d like. With an increasing number of labs / companies using Slack, we will use this platform for discussions in each of the four program areas, and could use it for discussion with (for example) the EBRC Council.
Email Newsletter: We will be putting out a monthly newsletter, starting mid-June. The newsletter will provide useful updates and announcements from EBRC and will supplement information provided through other ways. We realize that some companies won’t be able to use various technology solutions (e.g., Slack or Google), and this will always be accessible.
We look forward to continued engagement and dialogue with you.
Best,
Doug -
October 28, 2019
WEF Blog on Biofoundries
Check out the World Economic Forum blog post by Natalie Curach, Paul Freement, Sang Yup Lee, and Doug Friedman: How scientists are turning living cells into the tiny factories of the future.
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August 19, 2019
Check out our new “Synthetic Biology Media Resources” page
… and subscribe to EBRC’s YouTube channel to watch more than 170 videos about synthetic biology!
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July 9, 2019
Entrepreneurial Scientist & Engineer Fellowship in Sustainable Foods
Purple Orange Ventures, an impact seed fund from Berlin, has just launched an Entrepreneurial Scientist & Engineer Fellowship Program in partnership with The Good Food Institute, New Harvest and Proveg to help accelerate the animal-free foodtech movement in Europe, UK, Israel, and Singapore. The program provides 120K EUR of equity-free grant funding and coaching for 12 months to support the initial research necessary for starting a truly impactful company in the space. The full program description is available at https://www.purpleorange.com/fellowship.
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July 8, 2019
Expanding access to engineering biology – STEM outreach in high schools
EBRC SPA member Kathryn Brink authors a Nature Communities blog post about increasing engagement in STEM through outreach, providing a first-person perspective about bringing engineering biology to underserved communities.
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May 21, 2019
BioBuilder Teacher Training Workshops
Attention all teachers: There are still open spots for BioBuilder’s three-day professional development workshops this summer! Tuition scholarships are available. See the BioBuilder Professional Development website for more info.
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May 20, 2019
New publication from Jewett Lab
A new publication from Jessica Stark (Mike Jewett‘s lab at Northwestern Univ.) describes the use of cell-free synthetic biology in easy-to-use educational kits for teaching CRISPR and antibiotic resistance to high schools students. Check out the paper in ACS Synthetic Biology.
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May 19, 2019
EBRC Seeking Science Policy Postdocs
UC Berkeley and the Engineering Biology Research Consortium (EBRC) are seeking postdoctoral scholars interested in science policy. Learn more and apply today.
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May 8, 2019
Global Biofoundry Alliance Launches
A group of over 15 biofoundries from around the world came together in in Kobe, Japan to launch the Global Biofoundry Alliance. Read more about it in Nature Communications.
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April 5, 2019
Artificial Photosynthetic Cell Producing Energy for Protein Synthesis
Samuel Berhanu, Takuya Ueda, Yutetsu Kuruma. Nature Communications.
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March 4, 2019
UC’s patent for its pioneering CRISPR discovery
UC’s patent for its pioneering CRISPR discovery sets up a big battle over its rights. Los Angeles Times.
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March 4, 2019
PLANT-Dx: A Molecular Diagnostic for Point of Use Detection of Plant Pathogens
Matthew Verosloff, James Chappell, Keith L. Perry, Jeremy R. Thompson, and Julius B. Lucks. ACS Synthetic Biology.