Synthetic and Systems Biology
Drawing from concepts in a wide array of areas, including evolutionary biology, molecular biology, biophysics, and genetic engineering, researchers at Duke are developing methods to read and manipulate genetic code.
This work includes the development of new strategies for regenerative medicine, treatment of genetic disease, and techniques to establish robust gene circuit function. Research in synthetic and systems biology at Duke has provided insight into the design laws of natural biological systems.
The synthetic and systems biology research communities at Duke are supported and enhanced by the Center for Biomolecular and Tissue Engineering (CBTE).
Primary Faculty
Charles Gersbach
Rooney Family Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Research Interests: Gene therapy, genomics and epigenomics, biomolecular and cellular engineering, regenerative medicine, and synthetic biology.
Michael D Lynch
Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering
Research Interests: Focused on genetically engineering microbes to shut off their growth circuits and turn on new pathways to produce different compounds—improving production of biofuels, pharmacological molecules and industrial chemicals.
Amanda Randles
Alfred Winborne and Victoria Stover Mordecai Assistant Professor of Biomedical Sciences
Research Interests: Biomedical simulation and high-performance computing
Xiling Shen
Hawkins Family Associate Professor
Research Interests: Metabolic and epigenetic reprogramming of cancer metastasis, stem cell and organoid technology, microbiome-host-disease interaction, humanized immune cancer models, intravital imaging, CRISPR/dCAS9 epigenetic screening, and peripheral neuromodulation.
Michael Raphael Tadross
Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Research Interests: Our goal is to bridge the gap between the study of brain as a computational device and the search for novel neuropathological treatments. We develop technologies to manipulate molecules, cells, and synapses in the brain, and deploy these reagents in mouse models of disease.
Lingchong You
Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Research Interests: Computational systems biology & synthetic biology, including mathematical modeling of cellular networks; mechanisms of information processing by gene networks; design, modeling and construction of robust gene networks for applications in engineering and medicine.