About Us

The Center for Biological Design in Trondheim (CenTroN) was established in 2011 to leverage the wide range of resources and highly specialized competence in synthetic biology in the Trondheim region.  Biotechnology as a field is recognized by NTNU and the Norwegian Government as a Key Enabling Technology (KET), in which synthetic biology is central.

Synthetic biology is an area of biotechnology research where new biological functions or  devices are designed, built, and operated in living systems, or naturally existing biological systems are re-designed for practical use.  While many of the research methods are based on what is now standard molecular genetics tools, a central challenge is to combine basic building blocks into complex devices that exhibit robust function.

Members of CenTroN actively participate in the development of synthetic biology as a vigorous field of research in Norway through activities in our own research groups, the mentoring of M.Sc. students, and by annually organizing, hosting, and supporting the NTNU iGEM team. 

Suggested reading:

• YY Chen et al. "Synthetic biology: advancing biological frontiers by building synthetic systems," Genome Biology 13, 240 (2012).
• R Kwok, "Five hard truths for synthetic biology,"Nature 463, 288-290 (2010).
• AS Khalil & JJ Collins. "Synthetic biology: applications come of age." Nature Rev. Genet. 11, 367 (2010).
• PEM Purnick & R Weiss. "The second wave of synthetic biology: from modules to systems", Nature Rev. Mol. Cell Biol. 10, 410 (2009).
• JD Keasling. "Synthetic Biology for Synthetic Chemistry." ACS Chem. Biol. 3, 64 (2008).