Coding Theory and Algorithms for Emerging Technologies in Synthetic Biology (Dagstuhl Seminar 24511)

Abstract

The progress in understanding genes and genomes has given a boost to the use of synthetic DNA for biological and technological applications. Synthetic nucleic acids play a central role in synthetic biology and in emerging therapeutic paradigms, e.g., genome editing and nucleic acid vaccines. DNA-based data storage is making a significant progress, and thanks to its extreme data-density, its high durability and its timelessness, it is promising to be the next standard for data archival systems. 
Synthetic biology and the use of synthetic DNA for information storage applications bring important algorithmic and data analysis challenges. In synthetic biology, reagent and assay design are often driven by algorithmic approaches. Novel synthesis technologies offer cost-reduction by several orders of magnitude at the cost of increased error-rate, raising new coding-theoretic questions. 
This Dagstuhl Seminar brought together researchers working on different aspects of synthetic biology and applications in bio-informatics and informatics; the diverse crowd at the seminar included chemists, biologists, computer scientists, and communication engineers. It successfully honed in on the interplay between these fields, allowing participants a window into the insights of other disciplines, and bringing all of these together to bear on current challenges. Going forward, connections forged during the Dagstuhl Seminar will promote interdisciplinary collaboration between participants and their respective networks.