Synthetic Biology

The overall aim of the Synthetic Biology degree offered at Brunel University of Londonis to address major environmental, health and societal challenges by engineering biological systems such that they display functions that do not exist in nature, as well as re-designing existing biological systems so that they perform new functions.

Features

Our Synthetic Biology research at Brunel University London focuses on three key areas of activity.

• Gene therapy: Some diseases and disorders happen because certain genes work incorrectly or no longer work at all. We are designing therapeutic interventions for human diseases and disorders by developing the technologies to correct defective genes. Our current projects within this area look at vector development for effective gene therapy, assessing and avoiding the risks of gene therapy (genotoxicity) and using the technologies of gene therapy to give new insights into cancer development.

• Microbial bioengineering: The most exploitable and engineerable organisms are bacteria, so we want to harness their capacity and diversity to create white technologies –those which cause no harm.

Curriculum:

• Decision making for stratified medicine life cycle

• Deep Learning for Medical Imaging

• Deep learning methods in multi-omics data analysis for critical disease

• Deep learning-based autonomous diagnosis of gastrointestinal tract cancers

• Developing computational models to understand the evolution of bidirectional catalysts in biology