University of Nottingham researchers recieve new grant in Synthetic Biology

A team led by Drs Cameron Alexander (Pharmacy) and Natalio Krasnogor (CS + IT), in collaboration with Professors Ben Davis (Oxford) and Lee Cronin (Glasgow) ,has been awarded a total of £1.9 million by EPSRC to develop artificial cell mimics. The proposal, which will fund 4 post-doctoral researchers across the 4 research groups over the next 42 months, builds on earlier EPSRC IDEAS Factory funded science which led to a paper in Nature Biotechnology proposing a test for 'intelligence' in artificial cells. The combined Nottingham, Oxford and Glasgow teams are already working together in a Synthetic Biology Network, SynBioNT (led by Dr Krasnogor), and the new grant establishes the team amongst the pioneers in Synthetic Biology in the UK.