Rob Carlson a principle at Biodesic, an engineering, consulting, and design firm in Seattle moderated a plenary session focused on synthetic biology at BIO\u2019s Pacific Rim Summit on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioenergy. The panel, Status Report: The Synthetic Biology Pathway to Innovation in Fuels and Chemicals, consisted of scientists from both the biotechnology industry and academia expressing their views on the importance of synthetic biology and discussing how the technology has evolved over time.<\/b><\/p>\n
Todd Peterson, synthetic biology vice president at Life Technologies said, “synthetic biology is based on building living systems or rebuilding those that are living.\u201d Peterson described synthetic biology as engineering life for useful purposes, based on a rapidly growing field of research and new approaches to life sciences. It impacts a broad range of industrial applications using standardized parts, engineered hosts, assembly tools, computational design tools, and analytical tools in health care, renewable energy, renewable chemicals, agriculture and bio-remediation. Like traditional recombinant DNA technology, synthetic biology further manipulates nature, “enhancing,\u201d human beings or other organisms.<\/p>\n