News

A new network assembling expertise in food security, environmental sustainability and related policy across the Capital was launched at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh on Wednesday 25^th June 2014.

The network has been established in recognition that a diverse set of expertise is required to solve some of the most pressing challenges to our planet. EPS will become an active forum to stimulate interdisciplinary research collaborations, new training opportunities and to raise the profile of the world-leading plant and social science research ongoing in and around the Capital.  

June 18^th, 2014  The University of Edinburgh and Tianjin University today signed a memorandum of understanding outlining their intention to establish research and teaching collaborations in mutually interesting areas of synthetic and systems biology. 

The characteristics of any cell (phenotype) in a genetically identical population is determined by the level of expression of individual genes. Ramon Grima and colleagues at SynthSys have developed a general modelling framework for quantifying switching between a number of different phenotypes due to noise at the transcriptional,  translational, post-transcriptional and post-translational levels. The results shed light on how cells encode decisions, how they retain memory of their environment, as well as postulating new mechanisms for generating and controlling intracellular oscillations. The paper was published in PNAS.

SynthSys members, Dr Jane Calvert and Dr Pablo Schyfter (both social scientists) and Professor Alistair Elfick (an engineer) are co-authors of a newly published book “Synthetic aesthetics” published by the MIT Press and launched today in London at an event at the V&A.

Edinburgh scientists have helped build a fully functioning yeast chromosome from scratch. An international team of scientists redesigned a chromosome found in brewer’s yeast using computer software, and rebuilt it by piecing together a series of short segments they made in the lab. Dr Patrick Yizhi Cai of SynthSys and a co-author on the paper says: Our Synthetic and Systems Biology Institute is really at the forefront of synthetic genomics, and we are glad to be part of this landmark paper. The synthetic structure was shown to function like an ordinary chromosome when it was transplanted into living yeast cells, which survived and grew as normal. The study marks the first time that scientists have rebuilt a chromosome from a class of complex organisms -known as eukaryotes - which includes animals, plants and humans. Researchers have previously recreated chromosomes found in bacteria and viruses.