University of Liverpool to benefit from £32 million R&D investment

University of Liverpool is to partner with Edinburgh in a UK synthetic biology R&D project to establish three new research centres following £32 million government funding.

The universities will also join Oxford, Bristol, Southampton, and Birmingham universities in producing large pieces of DNA and gene clusters using new chemical methods.

The three new centres, based at the Universities of Edinburgh, Manchester and Warwick, will receive £32 million over five years to boost national research capacity.

An additional £8 million has been awarded to research partnerships across the UK to help create the DNA starting blocks required for synthetic biology applications.

Business Secretary, Vince Cable, said: “From materials for advanced manufacturing to developing new antibiotics and better tests for diseases, this new £40 million investment is in one of the most promising areas of modern science.

“It will see our world class researchers using bacteria to produce chemicals to make everyday products like toothbrushes and credit cards, which are currently made from unsustainable fossil fuels. Not only will this help improve people’s everyday lives in the future but it will support long-term economic growth.”

Professor Anthony Hall, from the University of Liverpool’s Centre for Genomic Research at the Institute of Integrative Biology, said: “This significant investment from the BBSRC is in addition to the £2M Liverpool GeneMill funded last year by the BBSRC, which will allow Liverpool’s Institute of Integrative Biology and the Centre for Genomic Research to expand its capacity and expertise in Synthetic Biology.

“As one of the Government’s ‘Eight Great Technologies’, synthetic biology is a key area and we will be working with both Edinburgh and Bristol Centre for Synthetic Biology to increase capacity in DNA synthesis and high-throughput phenotyping.”