Synthetic Biology and iGEM: Techniques, Development and Safety Concerns

Dr. Kang Ning, Professor of Microbial Bioinformatics Group and Director of Department of Bioinformatics and Systems Biology, School of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Dr. Ning obtained his BS in Computer Science from USTC, and PhD in Bioinformatics from NUS. He obtained his Post-Doc training in Bioinformatics at the University of Michigan. He has been devoting to bioinformatics research for more than 20 years focusing on omics big-data integration, microbiome analyses, and single-cell analyses. His current research interests include AI methods for multi-omics, especially metagenomics data mining and their applications. He is also interested in synthetic biology and high-performance computation. Dr. Ning as the leading or corresponding author, published over 80 research articles and reviews on leading journals including Gut, Genome Biology, Nucleic Acids Research, and Bioinformatics, with more than 2,000 citations in total. He is the committee member of several national bioinformatics and biology big-data committees in China. He serves as an editorial board member of the journal Genomics Proteomics and Bioinformatics and Scientific Reports, and served as reviewers for several international funding agencies including UK-BBSRC and UK-NERC. Dr. Yi Zhan, Associate Professor and Deputy Chair of the Committee of College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Dr. Zhan obtained his BS in Biotechnology and PhD in Biophysics from Huazhong University of Science and Technology. He obtained his Post-Doc training in Molecular Neuroscience at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He has been devoting to molecular biology research for more than 20 years focusing on the structure and function of proteins, especially membrane proteins in neuroscience. He is also interested in synthetic biology and its application in environment, healthcare, and manufacturing. Dr. Zhan served as judge in iGEM jamborees for several years and also served as team PI and instructors for iGEM team HUST-China for over 10 years. He has published several research articles in leading journals including Nature Communications, PNAS, etc. In some of these articles published on Small, ACS Synthetic Biology, BMC Biology, and Scientific Reports, except for the corresponding author Dr. Zhan and his faculty colleagues, the other authors are all undergraduate students from competition teams. His is now devoting his efforts to the education and training of undergraduate students studying life science.

Chapter 1. Introduction to Synthetic Biology.- Chapter 2. iGEM: The Competition on Synthetic Biology.- Chapter 3. Synthetic Biology-related Multi-omics Data Integration and Data Mining Techniques.- Chapter 4. Synthetic Biology: Technical Issues.- Chapter 5. Synthetic Biology: Development Issues.- Chapter 6. Synthetic Biology: Safety Issues.- Chapter 7. Synthetic Biology: Data Resources, Web Services and Visualizations.- Chapter 8. Synthetic Biology: Case Studies.- Chapter 9. Concluding Remarks.