Hello I'm currently in high school but even now I have a huge interest in synthetic biology, it would be helpful if anyone knew what university courses and onwards I would have to do. Thanks =]

I would strongly recommend taking a course in evolution that emphasizes organismal biology. You will inevitably take a lot of cell and molecular biology, as well as engineering and perhaps materials science. But do not omit the evolution and ecology because that tells you how and why things get built in nature, which will inform your understanding of synthetic biology immeasurably.

Best wishes,
Just Asking

I think it depends on what aspects of synthetic biology you're interested in.
If you want to focus on something akin to making artificial organs, then you would want to take engineering, biology, and anatomy.
If you want to focus on a more molecular level, you should probably take cell biology, and biochemistry.
I would recommend looking at graduate programs that you want to take (or even potential jobs) and then looking at the requisites for those programs and working backwards. That way you will not have the frustrating experience that I just had in realizing that I did not take two courses I needed to take to get into the graduate program that I wanted to take.
Evolution and ecology are interesting aspects I hadn't thought of. I doubt they would be pre-requisites, but it does have a certain appeal and gives a certain credibility...

The reason I say this is that I have talked to a lot of molecular biologists, not students but practicing scientists and for the most part they have neglected organismal biology and do not fully understand how evolution works (although they usually think they do). It's very simple, so there's really no excuse for this. What you pick up in an introductory biology class is not enough. In contrast, organismal biologists are expected to know lots of molecular and cell biology, which is as it should be.

I agree about with Katie that the courses you take will depend on what your interests turn out to be. But sometimes that's very hard to predict ahead of time. When you are in college, take things outside your area of immediate interest. There will be plenty of time to specialize later. Taking things you might not think will be interesting or important can lead in unexpected directions.

The important thing is to take classes from good teachers, no matter what the field. I have been out of college for 30 years and I still remember and use a lot that I learned from the best teachers and almost nothing from the bad ones. And I knew when I was in the classes which was which. Don't hesitate to drop a bad class!

Thanks a lot guys that's really helped, I'm more intrested in designing the organisms so organismal biolgy, biochemistry and some aspect that goes into evoultion would be a good choice?

Also where would I find these jobs because I have looked on the new scientist job page but none come up of relevance , or am I not looking hard enough? Im intrested in the engineering micro organisms part like creating new ones for secreting drugs etc

If you are still in high school, I would not try to focus on a specific job yet.

Other places that list jobs are Science and Nature. There is probably a journal of synthetic biology. Look there if you can.

I'll check back in next week.

Quite an exciting field. You would definitely need a solid background in mathematics and physics too. This is because synthetic biology is about building quantitative models and processing quantitative data. The biological models are based on physical principles.