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EU TESSY - Project (=Towards
European
Strategy
for Synthetic
BiologY)
Synthetic
Biology Literature and Statistical Review Download. Also available now isSynbiology
- An Analysis of Synthetic Biology Research in Europe and North
America. Literature and Statistical Review from October 2005.
Presentation
and Discussion of Synthetic Biology: Literature and Statistical Review
Report
Last Version Final SB-Structure : SynBiology is a rapidly
evolving science by Dr. Hubert S. Bernauer below.
Synthetic Biology is an emerging field in research and development with a high potential for application. The EU NEST (New and Emerging Science and Technology) initiative identified this global trend, which was initialized in the USA, and decided to restart informational research and investigations on this topic. A high level expert group was formed. Initial work on the EU NEST Synthetic Biology (SB) offensive was provided by the High Level Expert Group, who were preparing the European NEST Synthetic Biology program from the beginning. This group of experts provided a comprehensive Synthetic Biotechnology report, which was wonderfully written by Philip Ball (McMillan Press, Nature) and gives a comprehensive view by integrating the most recent activities of the apparently new and emerging but no less heterogeneous field of Synthetic Biology. Its final version was finished during the Synbiology project, which continued this work by deepening the aspect of unravelling a Synthetic Biology structure - if existing - and also trying to elucidate its differentiation from other scientific fields but also its integration into these fields.
Most of the recent Synthetic Biology projects which could be identified are diverse in their intentions and approaches. Globally these projects are unequally distributed - with a main prevalence in the USA, and within the USA unequally distributed and structured oligocentrically to the first class Universities such as MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, Scripps, Caltech, UCLA and others listed in the literature and statistical review (link page1). The recent founding of US companies equipped with tremendous amounts of Venture Capital is showing the economic potential which is ascribed to the new and emerging technologies which will result from Synthetic Biology.
Faced with this situation, the diversity of the topic Synthetic Biology is of interest to analyse in structure in more detail. Based on a decision scheme developed by investigating literature a Synthetic Biology on-line bibliography was generated and is provided to the SB community (see link). Second, the literature was systemized to describe the recent visible structures of the topic. The results of structural investigations of the scientific analysis are presented as a Synthetic Biology taxonomy as part of the Bibliography. These analyses were aimed at finding a common definition or at least at finding a binding working consensus convention for future communication and to systemize Synthetic Biology research's main focuses. Based on the results of the analysis of the structure of Synthetic Biology economical considerations and funding guidelines of the topic can be derived and compiled as results of the Synbiology Project.
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