Coordination Federal Activity
Innovation Through Sharing
Determine whether current research licensing and sharing practices are sufficient to ensure that basic research results involving synthetic biology are available to promote innovation, and, if not, whether additional policies or best practices are needed.
Recommendation
Synthetic biology is at a very early stage of development, and innovation should be encouraged. The Executive Office of the President, as part of the coordinated approach urged in Recommendation 4, should lead an effort to determine whether current research licensing and sharing practices are sufficient to ensure that basic research results involving synthetic biology are available to promote innovation, and, if not, whether additional policies or best practices are needed. This review should be undertaken with input from the National Institutes of Health, other agencies funding synthetic biology research, such as the Department of Energy and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, industry, academia, and public civil society groups. The review should be completed within 18 months and the results made public.
Activities
Federal
- Department of Energy (DOE)
- Office of Science
- The Office of Biological and Environmental Research’s (BER) Genomic Science Program is currently developing the DOE Systems Biology Knowledgebase, which is “a cyber-infrastructure consisting of a collection of data, organizational methods, standards, analysis tools, and interfaces representing a body of knowledge.” The purpose of this database is to reveal the genetic blueprints and fundamental principles that control biological functions of biological systems, and create an open, computational environment for sharing and integrating diverse biological data types, thereby supporting a cultural change in biology from a focus on individual project-based efforts to open community science.
- On September 2010, BER released the DOE Systems Biology Knowledgebase Implementation Plan, a five-year plan for the short- and long-term goals of this initiative.
- The Office of Biological and Environmental Research’s (BER) Genomic Science Program is currently developing the DOE Systems Biology Knowledgebase, which is “a cyber-infrastructure consisting of a collection of data, organizational methods, standards, analysis tools, and interfaces representing a body of knowledge.” The purpose of this database is to reveal the genetic blueprints and fundamental principles that control biological functions of biological systems, and create an open, computational environment for sharing and integrating diverse biological data types, thereby supporting a cultural change in biology from a focus on individual project-based efforts to open community science.
- DOE Joint Genome Institute
- The Genomic Technologies Department formed the Functional Genomics Group in April 2011. One of the two subgroups that make up this group is the Synthetic Biology group which focuses on data mining combined with gene synthesis and downstream functional analyses to provide a powerful tool for large-scale characterization of genes and regulatory sequences. The goal of the Genomics Technologies Department is to provide access of this tool to DOE users.
- Office of Science
- Executive Office of the President – No activities identified.
- National Institutes of Health – No activities identified.
- National Academy of Sciences – No activities identified.
- United States Patent and Trademark Office – No activities identified.
Non-Federal
- The BioBricks Foundation is a public-benefit organization dedicated to advancing synthetic biology to benefit all people and the planet by making engineering biology easier, safer, equitable, and more open. The foundation does this by ensuring that the fundamental building blocks of synthetic biology are freely available for open innovation by creating community, common values, and shared standards, as well as by promoting biotechnology for all constructive interests.
- The Registry of Standard Biological Parts is a continuously growing collection of genetic parts that can be mixed and matched to build synthetic biology devices and systems. Founded in 2003 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Registry is part of the Synthetic Biology community's efforts to make biology easier to engineer. It provides a resource of available genetic parts to iGEM teams and academic labs. The Registry is based on the principle of "get some, give some." Registry users benefit from using the parts and information available from the Registry in designing their engineered biological systems. In exchange, the expectation is that Registry users will contribute information and data on existing parts and new parts that they make to grow and improve this community resource.
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