Danish-American Collaboration on Cutting-Edge Research
An ambitious Danish research project is now entering a ground-breaking collaboration with American pioneers within synthetic biology – a new research area that may revolutionise the transformation of sunlight into energy.
The first steps in a transatlantic collaboration have been taken. Researchers are planning to tailor the tiny building blocks of plants to make it possible to use them for producing sustainable energy. They intend to change plants into small green factories capable of converting light energy into chemical energy in the form of hydrogen or electricity or transforming plant components more easily into biofuel.
The Californian university UC Berkeley has been at the forefront in the emergent research at the intersection between chemistry, biophysics, biology and molecular biology. UC Berkeley is in the process of setting up a special faculty for the new discipline which will be collaborating with Danish researchers.
– We wish to collaborate with Denmark because the Danes have managed, quite uniquely, to combine synthetic biology with nanotechnology. We have not seen that elsewhere, says Shankar Sastry, Dean, College of Engineering, UC Berkeley, referring to the UNIK project at the University of Copenhagen, which is an entirely new collaboration between the University's Nano-Science Center, Faculty of Health Sciences and Faculty of Life Sciences.
Six months ago, Science Minister Helge Sander allocated DKK 120 million to the project from the UNIK research pool, the largest allocation ever to multidisciplinary research projects.
– I am proud that Denmark can measure up to the world's leading researchers within synthetic biology. An important framework for the Danish-Californian collaboration will be a new research agreement between Denmark and the United States which I expect to sign together with the new US ambassador to Denmark later this year. It is part of the agreement that funding can be applied for to enable increased collaboration in the future, says Helge Sander.
The parties are pleased with the collaboration and see great potentials:
– Within synthetic biology, there is hardly a better partner in the world than UC Berkeley. They have the resources to carry out large-scale experiments, and we can contribute special knowledge in many of the processes, says Thomas Bjørnholm, Professor of Nano and Materials Chemistry, who is the head of the UNIK project.
– In classic biology we study nature's building blocks, in synthetic biology we take those building blocks and put them into new contexts; here, the tools of nanotechnology are decisive, allowing us to get down to the single-molecule level, says Jay Groves, Associate Professor of Chemistry, UC Berkeley.
– By joining forces with the world's leading researchers in the area, both parties can avoid making the same mistakes, and we avoid the risk of wasting research funds. With the climatic challenges facing us, the time is ripe for focusing on synthetic biology, says Professor Peter Olesen, Chairman of the Danish Council for Strategic Research.
This new area of research is destined to become a key motive force for economic growth.
– From 1995 to 2002, information technology was heading the agenda. The next growth area will be biochemistry, with synthetic biology assuming a decisive role. Commercially sustainable biofuels will merely be one of the possibilities in this field, says Shankar Sastry.
The next workshop in synthetic biology is expected to be held in Denmark in 2010.
– We are already looking forward to next year. Here we reckon on seeing the fruits of this year's meeting in the form of the first Danish-Californian research projects within this ground-breaking research area, says Lars Beer Nielsen, who is the Science Ministry's Research and Technology attaché.
Contact information:
Science Minister Helge Sander can be contacted via the Ministry's press officer, Charlotte Holst, phone +45 22 11 02 00 or .
Thomas Bjørnholm, Professor of Nano and Materials Chemistry, Nano-Science Center, , phone +45 35 32 18 35.
Birger Lindberg Møller, Professor of Plant Biochemistry, Department of Plant Biology and Biotechnology, Faculty of Life Sciences, , phone +45 35 33 33 52.
Lars Beer Nielsen, Research and Technology attaché, Innovation Center Denmark, Silicon Valley, , phone +1 650 353 8879
Professor Shankar Sastry, Dean, College of Engineering, UC Berkeley, , phone +1 510 642 5771.
Professor Jay Groves, Dep. of Chemistry, UC Berkeley, , phone +1 510 666 3602.
