Chemical and Synthetic Biology
About
Chemical and Synthetic Biology is an interdisciplinary field that uses chemical tools, molecular design and engineering principles to study, manipulate and understand biological systems. It develops chemical probes, synthetic molecules and molecular technologies to investigate biological processes and control cellular function. Research in this area at the RSC spans protein/peptide engineering and evolution, structural and mechanistic studies of biomolecules, analytical and biophysical characterisation, and the development of cell-free and cell-based platforms for pharmaceutical, agricultural and industrial applications. RSC jointly hosts the ANU SynBio Initiative, and ANU nodes of 3x ARC Centres of Excellence including ‘Synthetic Biology’, ‘Innovations in Peptide and Protein Science’ and more recently ‘Advanced Peptide and Protein Engineering’. This research is supported through substantial competitive funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC), National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) and the Snow Medical Research Foundation.