PLOS ONE Launches Synthetic Biology Collection

Today PLOS ONE is happy to announce the launch of the Synthetic Biology Collection, including over 50 papers published in the last six years that illustrate the many facets of this dynamically evolving research area.

Synthetic biology is an innovative emerging field that exists at the intersection of many traditional disciplines, including biology, chemistry, and engineering, with aims to create biological systems that can be programmed to do useful things like produce drugs or biofuels, among other applications. Despite its potential, the heavily interdisciplinary nature of the research can make it difficult to publish in traditional discipline-specific journals.

However, PLOS ONE’s broad scope allows for the publication of work crossing many traditional research boundaries, making it an ideal venue for many different types of synthetic biology research. For example, the papers in the collection cover topics including DNA synthesis and assembly, standardized biological “parts” akin to interchangeable mechanical parts, protein engineering, and complex network and pathway analysis and modeling, as described in the Collection Overview written by collection editors Jean Peccoud of Virginia Tech and Mark Isalan of the Centre for Genomic Regulation.

The Collection has roots in PLOS ONE’s very first issue, which included two publications from the field. Since then, the number of synthetic biology articles published in the journal has grown steadily. The collection launched today highlights selected synthetic biology articles published in PLOS ONE since 2006, and it is intended to be a growing resource that will be updated regularly with new papers as the field continues to grow and develop.

Collection Citation: Synthetic Biology (2012) PLOS Collections: http://www.ploscollections.org/syntheticbiology

Image Credit: Ivan Morozov (Virginia Bioinformatics Institute)