Plant SynBio Australia

A recent $20M investment from the Commonwealth has led to the development of the Plant SynBio Australia (PSBA), a network of facilities with nodes at Adelaide University, Australian National University, La Trobe University and University of Western Australia.

PSBA is set to provide plant synthetic biology infrastructure and expertise which will drive accelerated gains in agricultural productivity, and development of new products through environmentally sustainable bio-manufacturing.

PSBA – UA enables plant synthetic biology services for agricultural crops, as well as for synthetic biology projects in ‘model’ plants. It provides infrastructure and expertise for research provider, government and industry institutions as fee-for-service as well as providing incubation space for the start-up community and opportunities to collaborate. The facility provides capability across the synthetic biology cycle including design of molecular componentry, genetic editing and transformation, and the phenotypic evaluation of the bio-designed plants. 

The PSBA investment was provided by the Commonwealth Government via the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) as part of a larger $55M ‘Step Change’ investment to enable synthetic biology across industrial fermentation, plant agriculture and medical research and biosecurity domains. The investment is managed by Bioplatforms Australia, a non-profit organisation that supports Australian life science research by investing in state-of-the-art infrastructure and expertise in genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, synthetic biology and bioinformatics.