Title: Biodesign Research to Advance the Principles and Applications of Biosystems Design

Abstract

Over the course of civilization, humans have increasingly expanded their freedom to live a better life. In comparison with the primitive society, our modern society has many more choices of life-supporting resources, such as year-round food supply, permanent shelters, diverse energy sources, and effective preventive and curing medicine. However, our society is currently still heavily relying on the resources provided by Mother Nature, which cannot meet the future global needs in terms of both quantity and quality under the pressure of population growth, natural resource reduction, and environmental deterioration. For example, the food sources originating from plants, animals, or microbes do not have the nutrition balance for optimal human health. Climate change and environmental deterioration threaten the food security. Increasingly, infectious diseases (e.g., HIV/AIDS), genetic diseases (e.g., cancer), and improper lifestyle-related disorders (e.g., obesity) become more prevalent and remain challenging to be prevented, controlled, and cured. Conventional medical technologies and modern medicine development are also meeting the ceiling. Antibiotic resistance is threatening the health of humans, animals, and environment. As the human lifespan continues to increase, aging-related diseases, disorders, and poor life quality are becoming global challenges. Plants, animals, and microbes in nature have evolved as part of our Earthmore » ecosystem, not for benefiting humans. Even though humans have put forth tremendous efforts to domesticate plants, animals, and microbes based on random/induced mutations, hybridization, and limited genetic modifications via biological engineering, the improved food and industrial crop plants, animals, and microbial strains are still far from optimized for meeting the human needs. In other words, natural evolution and domestication in plants, animals, and microbes are tinkering processes and therefore cannot meet the ever-exploding population on the one hand and the unending appetite for living better quality life on the other. One promising strategy for solving these global challenges is to employ revolutionary biosystems design (also called biodesign), which is defined as predictable modification of existing organisms or creation of new organisms using rational engineering or automated design based on the theory and principles of biosystems design.« less

Authors:

Yang, Xiaohan  ^[1];

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Qi, Lei S. ^[2]; Jaramillo, Alfonso ^[3]; Cheng, Zong-Ming ^[4]

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+ Show Author Affiliations

1. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Biosciences Division and The Center for Bioenergy Innovation
2. Stanford Univ., CA (United States)
3. Univ. of Warwick, Coventry (United Kingdom). Warwick Integrative Synthetic Biology Centre (WISB) and School of Life Sciences; Univ. Paris-Saclay, Evry (France); Univ. of Valencia-CSIC, Paterna (Spain). Inst. for Integrative Systems Biology (I2SysBio)
4. Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN (United States); Nanjing Agricultural Univ., Jiangsu Province (China)

Publication Date:

Fri Nov 22 00:00:00 EST 2019

Research Org.:

Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)

Sponsoring Org.:

USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER); USDOD; Li Ka Shing Foundation; Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC); Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC); Tennessee Agricultural Experiment Station

OSTI Identifier:

1606789

Grant/Contract Number:  

AC05-00OR22725; EVO-ENGINE BB/P020615/1; BB/M017982/1

Resource Type:

Accepted Manuscript

Journal Name:

BioDesign Research

Additional Journal Information:

Journal Volume: 2019; Journal Issue: NA; Journal ID: ISSN 2693-1257

Publisher:

AAAS

Country of Publication:

United States

Language:

English

Subject:

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES