Introduction
SPPI-NET is an academic network which has the objective of promoting interdisciplinary collaborative ventures to produce synthetic plant products for industrial applications.
The network is initially funded for 3 years from July 2008 by the BBSRC, EPSRC and ESRC, and is headed by Prof. Robert Edwards and Dr. Patrick Steel (Durham University).
SPPI-NET has been created as a response to our increasing use of biologically renewable materials as feedstocks for industry as replacements for fossil fuel sources. Current activities in biorefining such as the Integrated Biorefining Tecnologies Initiative (IBTI) have identified existing plant and microbial biomass as sources of polymers, platform and speciality chemicals. However, most plant sources are not optimised for the efficient delivery of an extended range og useful chemical inputs for industry. In addition, many natural products do not perform as well as synthetic alternatives with respect to chemical and/or physical characteristics. If we are to move fully to a bio-based economy we must therefore consider radically improving plants and microbes as future biochemical factories. While some of these improvements can be incremental and take advantage of existing technologies such as marker-assisted breeding and genetic engineering of key metabolic traits to improve the chemical productivity of crops, such approaches are effectively limited to improving what is already in nature.
Using synthetic biology approaches SPPI-NET has the goal of radically re-engineering the metabolism and physiology of plants for non-food industrial applications in the chemical and materials industries. Taking a lead from the physical sciences it should be possible to custom produce biologically derived chemicals/materials with properties which match or exceed those derived from synthetic chemistry. Such an ambitious long term objective requires integrated working between plant scientists, chemists, process engineers and modellers. Clearly an early challenge for the network is to identify and assemble such cartels of interdisciplinary workers. In another important strand of activity, the social and societal issues surrounding such radical biological engineering needs to be carefully considered. The risks and benefits of large scale synthetic biology programmes need to be understood and disseminated to the public.
Finally SPPI-NET is one of several networks in Synthetic Biology funded by UK research councils and a further objective is to join up thinking in the UK in this emerging and exciting area of science, develop national capacity and disseminate best practices in technology, strategy and related social science issues.
The organisation of the network encompasses a steering group, who have identified some initial topic areas for focus, which will be explored in greater detail in our first meeting in 2009. The network is open to both academics and industrialists. If you would like to add yourself to the SPPI-NET mailing list, you will be able to do so here soon.
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