Displaying items by tag: Synthetic Biology
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Synthetic Biology
Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Science of Stellenbosch University
Deadline: 05 December 2022
New Synthetic Biology Team
New Synthetic Biology Team - Several Positions Available
Deadline: 30 November 2021
Synthetic Yeast 2.0 - Building the world's first synthetic eukaryotic genome together
The Craig Venter Institute built a synthetic bacterial genome, and George Church, Farren Isaacs and colleagues have engineered the E. coli genome using an innovative platform called MAGE and genome synthesis methods. Now the focus is on the first eukaryote, the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. This organism has 16 linear chromosomes and a relatively compact (~14Mb total; ~12 Mb nonredundant) and well-understood genome. The synthetic yeast genome can be used to answer a wide variety of profound questions about fundamental properties of chromosomes, genome organization, gene content, function of RNA splicing, the extent to which small RNAs play a role in yeast biology, the distinction between prokaryotes and eukaryotes, and questions relating to genome structure and evolution. The availability of a fully synthetic genome will allow direct testing of evolutionary questions not otherwise approachable. The eventual “synthetic yeast” being designed and refined could eventually play an important practical role. Yeasts, and S. cerevisiae in particular, are preeminent organisms for industrial fermentations, with a wide variety of practical uses including ethanol production from agricultural products and by-products.