Five MIT researchers are among the pioneers behind a new research center in synthetic biology, a precocious field whose primary long-term goal is to make it easier to design and build useful organisms.

Current work includes refining pieces of DNA into standard biological parts that researchers could then mix and match to produce novel biological systems -- such as bacteria that synthesize rare cancer drugs -- and also fostering the responsible development and application of next-generation biological technologies.

The Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (SynBERC) is funded by a five-year, $17 million grant from the National Science Foundation.

In addition to MIT, participating universities are the University of California at Berkeley; Harvard University; University of California at San Francisco; and Prairie View A&M University. Matching funds from industry and these universities bring the total five-year commitment to $20 million, with NSF offering the possibility of a five-year extension of the grant. The center is managed via the California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research and directed by Professor Jay Keasling of UC Berkeley. The work of the center will be distributed, with major nodes in Cambridge and in San Francisco.

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