Synthetic biology in China, UK and US

China started to support synthetic biology research in 2011. So far nine projects have been supported with one related to plant and one to mammalian cells, the rest on microbial technology. Natural products (NPs) have always been an important area for synthetic biology research [4]. reviewed the progresses in discovery of novel biological parts and rational design of synthetic biological pathways, as well as pathway optimization [6]. described the “development of a Streptomycetes chassis” for fast growth and rapid production of natural products via the exploration of various genetic tools for the chassis named Streptomyces sp. FR-008 [6] [1]. demonstrated that synthetic biology could be used to improve economy and diversity of a biodegradable plastic family called polyhydroxyalkanotes (PHA). Design and construction of synthetic microbial consortia have also been supported by Chinese 973 Synthetic Biology program, which aim to address the fundamental challenges in engineering natural microbial consortia and reconstructing the consortia for industrial demands [8]. Beside microbial synthetic biology, the only one mammalian synthetic biology project in China has been dedicated to devices used to treat bladder cancer [7], including toolkits of DNA, RNA and protein parts to explore various cancer research subjects. On the other hand [5], were able to visualize and precisely design artificial small RNAs for regulating T7 RNA polymerase to enhance recombinant protein folding in E. coli, enzyme activity could be increased by 170%. The UK is perhaps the most active country in synthetic biology. UK government commissioned the production of a national synthetic biology roadmap already in 2011, this was the first national roadmap by any country and any organization [2]. Critical