The final meeting of the European project "BIOROBOOST: fostering synthetic biology standardization through international collaboration", coordinated by the Universitat de València, has taken place on September 15-16, 2021. The objective of this H2020 project has been to foster the discussion on standards in synthetic biology through international collaboration. As part of a series of discussions with representatives of the biotechnology industry, the White Book "Standardisation in Synthetic Biology: State-of-the-art and recommendations for policy makers" was presented.
On Thursday, September 16, 2021, in the Veles e Vents building, a series of events took place with the participation of members of the biotechnology industry, not only nationally but also internationally, in the presence of representatives of the University of Valencia, the Valencia City Council, the Generalitat Valenciana and the European Commission. This event marked the completion of the BioRoboost project, which has been funded through the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program with €2M.
Standards are everywhere in our civilization. Examples of standards are the nuts and bolts, the parts our cars are made of or the operating systems that make our computers and cell phones work. Standards work because they are robust, reliable, universal and, of course, they do so in the expected way, so they have predictable behavior. But this is engineering. What about biotechnology? Biotechnology is engineering biological functions beyond those evolved in nature. The most advanced version of biotechnology is synthetic biology, which aims to make it possible to design and building living organisms. If this ambitious goal is to become a reality, synthetic biology also needs standards. To fill this gap and encourage standardization in biology as much as possible, the EU H2020 program project BioRoboost was born.
Over the past three years, a unique combination of 25 entities (21 European and 6 non-European entities) such as research laboratories, social scientists, companies and biotechnology-related experts from Europe, Asia and the United States has conducted extensive research work. This research has culminated in several events, among others, the publication and presentation of the white book "Standardisation in Synthetic Biology: State-of-the-art and recommendations for policy makers", in which different issues about standards in Synthetic Biology are presented and discussed. The book contains a series of specific recommendations for decision makers, not only in science but also in policy, to move towards the standardization of synthetic biology. The book promotes simple actions to move towards the definition of standards, as well as general guidelines to achieve this ambitious goal.
The white paper was presented by Manuel Porcar, Principal Investigator of the BioRoboost Project and leader of the Biotechnology and Synthetic Biology Group of the Institute for Integrative Systems Biology (I2SysBio, a joint UV-CSIC center), together with Víctor de Lorenzo (CNB-CSIC), Elena Ordozgoiti (UNE) and Ángel Fuentes (European Commission).
Next, several international representatives of the biotechnology industry participated in a round table in which relevant aspects of the adoption of standards were discussed. Finally, local and national biotech companies, including Darwin Bioprospecting Excellence, a spin-off of the University of Valencia based in its Science Park, took center stage to talk about the impact of R+D+I activities on the future of this industry and the role of the conclusions reached with BioRoboost. Attendees also received a reprint of the monograph of the journal Mètode of the Universitat de València dedicated to standards and published in the framework of BioRoboost.
Synthetic biology has advanced a lot in the last decade. We are actively participating in one of the scientific and technological revolutions that will decide the course of future knowledge and BioRoboost includes the Universitat de València in the map of this research field.
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