This conference will focus on the advancement of synthetic biology, especially its application in the field of antibiotic production in filamentous fungi and actinomycete bacteria, including the implementation and modification of complex biosynthesis pathway modules in existing and new production hosts. It follows on from the successful first ESF-EMBO symposium on the Synthetic Biology of Antibiotic Production in autumn 2011 (meeting report: Takano et al., Mol. Micro. 2012), which brought together a highly interdisciplinary community and sparked many new collaborative research efforts.

Now, this meeting will explore the significant progress that has been achieved in the intervening 3 years, in synthetic biology as applied in the field of antibiotic production, including the implementation and modification of complex biosynthesis pathway modules, orthologous regulatory circuitry development, new production host development, and awakening sleeping clusters by use of synthetic biology. It will allow participants to see how far we have come in capitalizing on the major technological breakthroughs that were promised at the previous meeting.

The conference will bring together participants from academia and the biotechnology industry, and researchers covering a widely interdisciplinary range of essential approaches, including microbiology, metagenomics, combinatorial biochemistry, mathematical and computational modelling, cell engineering, molecular cell biology and biotechnology, and many more.