Systems & Synthetic Biology

Biology has entered a world of ‘-omes.’ We have the tools to look comprehensively at an organism’s genome, proteome, glycome, metabolome, etc. And it is time to start integrating this information to understand the physiology and ecology of life. The Center for Systems and Synthetic Biology brings together UT researchers in biotechnology, math, computer science, chemistry and evolutionary biology to assimilate the wealth of data from the ‘-omes.’

Find it. What are the genes, proteins, metabolites and pathways that form living organisms? Applying bioinformatics, molecular evolution and data mining tools, UT research groups are identifying new cellular components and testing their functions using biochemical, biophysical and genetic methods.

Link it. How are the elements of life connected? Models of their interactions and connections form enormous networks. Learning the properties and connectivity of these networks reveals the broad organizational patterns of living systems.

Build it. Synthetic Biology puts metabolic and regulatory models to test. By engineering molecules and cells to respond to specific inputs, students and faculty have begun assembling a toolkit of components to build new sensors and living processors.

Evolve it. Nothing in life is constant. We learn how systems change by elucidating the natural evolutionary processes. Synthetic Biology harnesses in vitro evolution to model these processes and create molecular diversity for recognition and catalysis.