The University of Manchester was awarded £10.3 million from BBSRC/EPSRC to set up the Centre for Synthetic Biology of Fine and Speciality Chemicals (SYNBIOCHEM), to develop new faster, more predictable and reliable “greener” routes to fine and speciality chemicals production.

The vision was to harness the power of Synthetic Biology (SynBio) to propel chemicals and natural products production towards ’green’ and sustainable manufacturing processes.

More broadly, the Centre would provide the general tools, technology platforms and SynBio ‘know-how’ to drive academic discovery and translate new knowledge and processes towards industrial exploitation, through active collaborations with a large variety of industry partners.

Within SynBioChem, the eScience Lab was supporting the DATA sub-project, working to develop an integrated data and metadata management platform for the centre based on FAIRDOM-SEEK, openBIS, LabArchives, and ICE.