Mapping the Emerging Synthetic Biology Landscape

This map shows the locations (by zipcode) of companies, government laboratories, research institutions, and universities conducting synthetic biology research and policy centers examining issues surrounding synthetic biology.

Synthetic biology is described by the Rathenau Instituut, an independent advisory organization to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), as the convergence of molecular biology, information technology and nanotechnology, leading to the systematic design of biological systems. Like other emerging technologies, synthetic biology has the potential to play a key role in local economic development over the coming decades in places all over the world. Current estimates place the synthetic biology research market at $600M with the potential for it to grow to over $3.5B over the next decade. Other estimates predict that one fifth of the chemical industry (worth $1.8T) could be dependent on synthetic biology by 2015.

The emergence of synthetic biology clusters, where companies are linked by common markets, labor pools, and similar technologies, is currently underway in the United States and Europe. Whether these clusters will gain performance advantages through co-location and have significant impacts on local economies is yet to be determined, but the identification of emerging pockets of activity is an important first step in the development of strategies to improve local innovation and stimulate employment growth.

To explore how and where synthetic biology is being developed and commercialized in the United States and Europe, the Synthetic Biology Project has compiled publicly available data and created an inventory of maps that can be used to examine the locations of universities, government labs, companies, research institutions, and policy centers exploring this emerging technology. A total of 227 sites were found in the United States and 80 in Europe. The following graphs and charts show the number of universities, companies, research institutions, and government labs conducting synthetic biology research and policy centers examining issues surrounding synthetic biology in the United States and Europe as well as the number in each state or country.