Founded in May 2019, the laboratory focuses on the major scientific challenges related to understanding, remodeling, and building living systems. It conducts research on the fundamental principles, basic methods and medical translational applications of quantitative biology and synthetic genomics. It focuses on breakthroughs in the theoretical framework for the quantitative description and prediction of living systems, artificial regulation, intercellular communication and collaboration, synthesis of functional networks, and system robustness. The laboratory enhanced its capabilities in key technologies such as artificial chromosome design and construction, directed evolution, modular reconstruction of regulatory pathways, and automated construction and testing of living systems. It has promoted the application of synthetic biology for the diagnosis and treatment of tumors, prevention and treatment of multi-drug resistant bacteria, and synthesis of biomedical materials. The laboratory strives to promote the life sciences in order to accomplish the leap from understanding life to designing life, and strives to grow into an important hub for basic science and technological innovation in China. It envisages providing scientific support for the accumulation of original theories on artificial living systems, encouraging innovation in the life sciences and healthcare, and stimulating the development of the biological industry in China. It combines the top-down “study the nature of things” research philosophy from systems biology with the bottom-up “build life to understand it, build life to use it” engineering philosophy of synthetic biology. The Key Laboratory has outlined three research directions: theoretical basis of living systems, enabling technology, and application demonstration.
