We produced a series of illustrations based around three key papers on synthetic biology for
Synberc. These are designed to communicate some of the key aspects of synthetic biology:
1-Illustration showing the concept of yeast cells as a chemical factory, which highlights one of the main uses of synthetic biology – harnessing cellular mechanics to our own purposes.
2-Illustration showing an anlogy of “survival of the fittest” with respect to genetic engineering. Multiple genes can be tweaked with each bacterium taking different combination – the most successful at each stage are selected and the process repeated. This guided randomness tests many mutations at once, and allows selection of desired traits e.g. increased production of a desired product within the bacterium.
3-Illustration showing the concept of how synthetic biology can be used to create analogies to electronic circuits, whereby the presence or otherwise of chemical inputs can drive a logic circuit, resulting in an action within the cell (e.g. colour change, production of a chemical marker, etc). Simple AND, NOT, and OR gates can be made and combined to produce useful results.
