The power of synthetic biology for bioproduction, remediation and pollution control: The UN's Sustainable Development Goals will inevitably require the application of molecular biology and biotechnology on a global scale

Víctor de Lorenzo; Kristala Lj Prather; Guo-Qiang Chen; Elizabeth O'Day; Conrad von Kameke; Diego A Oyarzún; Leticia Hosta-Rigau; Habiba Alsafar; Cong Cao; Weizhi Ji; Hideyuki Okano; Richard J Roberts; Mostafa Ronaghi; Karen Yeung; Feng Zhang; Sang Yup Lee

doi:10.15252/embr.201745658

The power of synthetic biology for bioproduction, remediation and pollution control: The UN's Sustainable Development Goals will inevitably require the application of molecular biology and biotechnology on a global scale

EMBO Rep. 2018 Apr;19(4):e45658. doi: 10.15252/embr.201745658. Epub 2018 Mar 26.

Authors

Víctor de Lorenzo^{1

2}, Kristala Lj Prather^{1

3}, Guo-Qiang Chen^{1

4

5}, Elizabeth O'Day^{1

6}, Conrad von Kameke^{1

7}, Diego A Oyarzún^{1

8}, Leticia Hosta-Rigau^{1

9}, Habiba Alsafar^{1

10}, Cong Cao^{1

11}, Weizhi Ji^{1

12}, Hideyuki Okano^{1

13}, Richard J Roberts^{1

14}, Mostafa Ronaghi^{1

15}, Karen Yeung^{1

16}, Feng Zhang^{1

17

18

19}, Sang Yup Lee^{1

20

21}

Affiliations

¹ Global Future Council on the Future of Biotechnologies, World Economic Forum, Geneva, Switzerland.
² Systems Biology Program, National Center of Biotechnology CSIC, Madrid, Spain.
³ Department of Chemical Engineering, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁴ Center for Synthetic and Systems Biology, MOE Lab for Industrial Biocatalysis, Tsinghua-Peking University Center of Life Sciences, School of Life Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
⁵ Center for Synthetic and Systems Biology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
⁶ Olaris Therapeutics, Inc., Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁷ BioInnovators Europe, Berlin, Germany.
⁸ Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London, London, UK.
⁹ Department of Micro- and Nanotechnology, Center for Nanomedicine and Theranostics, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark.
¹⁰ Khalifa University Center for Biotechnology, Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
¹¹ University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China.
¹² Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming, Yunnan, China.
¹³ Department of Physiology, Keio University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan.
¹⁴ New England Biolabs, Ipswich, MA, USA.
¹⁵ Illumina Inc., San Diego, CA, USA.
¹⁶ The Centre for Technology, Ethics, Law, & Society, Law School, King's College London, London, UK.
¹⁷ Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA.
¹⁸ McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA.
¹⁹ Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Department of Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
²⁰ Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (BK21 Plus Program), Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, Korea.
²¹ The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability, Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark.

Abstract

The UN's Sustainable Development Goals present a challenge for biotechnology to develop new environmentally‐friendly and sustainable products and production processes.

MeSH terms

Biodegradation, Environmental*
Biotechnology*
Environmental Restoration and Remediation*
Global Health
Humans
Molecular Biology
Sustainable Development
Synthetic Biology* / methods
United Nations