The principles guiding engineering efforts in Synthetic Biology can be very well summarized by Richard Feynman’s quote ‘What I cannot create, I do not understand’. However, many times unexpected emergent behaviors arise in living cells and we can’t just ignore them. This is particularly bad when trying to implement genetic circuits to carry out a specific function.

The synbio lab at Surrey focuses on that problem. We are looking into the economics of cellular resources in bacteria; if we understand how cells decide to allocate their resources, we will be able to efficiently design genetic circuits capable of performing many different tasks. We also try to take advantage of evolution using combinatorial approaches for tailored functions. We are interested in everything that evolves with special mention to ribozymes, bacteriophages and antibodies.

Jimenez JI, Avendaño R, Chaves N, Fuentes P, Sánchez E, Jiménez JI, Chavarría M. (2016) 'Production of selenium nanoparticles in Pseudomonas putida KT2440'. Nature Publishing Group Scientific Reports, 6 Article number 37155 doi: 10.1038/srep37155 Xulvi-Brunet R, Campbell GW, Rajamani S, Jimenez JI, Chen IA. (2016) 'Computational analysis of fitness landscapes and evolutionary networks from in vitro evolution experiments'. ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE METHODS, 106, pp. 86-96. doi: 10.1016/j.ymeth.2016.05.012 Kim J, Salvador M, Saunders E, González J, Avignone Rossa C, Jimenez JI. (2016) 'Properties of alternative microbial hosts used in Synthetic Biology: Towards the design of a modular chassis'. Essays in Biochemistry,