Approaches to chemical synthetic biology (original) (raw)
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From Never Born Proteins to Minimal Living Cells: Two Projects in Synthetic Biology
Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, 2007
The Never Born Proteins (NBPs) and the Minimal Cell projects are two currently developed research lines belonging to the field of synthetic biology. The first deals with the investigation of structural and functional properties of de novo proteins with random sequences, selected and isolated using phage display methods. The minimal cell is the simplest cellular construct which displays living properties, such as self-maintenance, self-reproduction and evolvability. The semi-synthetic approach to minimal cells involves the use of extant genes and proteins in order to build a supramolecular construct based on lipid vesicles. Results and outlooks on these two research lines are shortly discussed, mainly focusing on their relevance to the origin of life studies.
Synthetic biology: putting synthesis into biology
WIREs Systems Biology and Medicine, 2010
The ability to manipulate living organisms is at the heart of a range of emerging technologies that serve to address important and current problems in environment, energy, and health. However, with all its complexity and interconnectivity, biology has for many years been recalcitrant to engineering manipulations. The recent advances in synthesis, analysis, and modeling methods have finally provided the tools necessary to manipulate living systems in meaningful ways and have led to the coining of a field named synthetic biology. The scope of synthetic biology is as complicated as life itself-encompassing many branches of science and across many scales of application. New DNA synthesis and assembly techniques have made routine customization of very large DNA molecules. This in turn has allowed the incorporation of multiple genes and pathways. By coupling these with techniques that allow for the modeling and design of protein functions, scientists have now gained the tools to create completely novel biological machineries. Even the ultimate biological machinery-a self-replicating organism-is being pursued at this moment. The aim of this article is to dissect and organize these various components of synthetic biology into a coherent picture.
A brief history of synthetic biology
| The ability to rationally engineer microorganisms has been a long-envisioned goal dating back more than a half-century. With the genomics revolution and rise of systems biology in the 1990s came the development of a rigorous engineering discipline to create, control and programme cellular behaviour. The resulting field, known as synthetic biology, has undergone dramatic growth throughout the past decade and is poised to transform biotechnology and medicine. This Timeline article charts the technological and cultural lifetime of synthetic biology, with an emphasis on key breakthroughs and future challenges.
Synthetic Biology: A Novel Approach for the Construction of Industrial Microorganisms
Food Technology and Biotechnology, 2013
The recent achievement of synthesising a functioning bacterial chromosome marks a coming of age for engineering living organisms. In the future this should allow the construction of novel organisms to help solve the problems facing the human race, including health care, food, energy and environmental protection. In this minireview, the current state of the field is described and the role of synthetic biology in biotechnology in the short and medium term is discussed. It is particularly aimed at the needs of food technologists, nutritionists and other biotechnologists, who might not be aware of the potential significance of synthetic biology to the research and development in their fields. The potential of synthetic biology to produce interesting new polyketide compounds is discussed in detail.
A Perspective of Synthetic Biology: Assembling building blocks for novel functions
Synthetic biology is a recently emerging field that applies engineering formalisms to design and construct new biological parts, devices, and systems for novel functions or life forms that do not exist in nature. Synthetic biology relies on and shares tools from genetic engineering, bioengineering, systems biology and many other engineering disciplines. It is also different from these subjects, in both insights and approach. Applications of synthetic biology have great potential for novel contributions to established fields and for offering opportunities to answer fundamentally new biological questions. This article does not aim at a thorough survey of the literature and detailing progress in all different directions. Instead, it is intended to communicate a way of thinking for synthetic biology in which basic functional elements are defined and assembled into living systems or biomaterials with new properties and behaviors. Four major application areas with a common theme are discussed and a procedure (or “protocol”) for a standard synthetic biology work is suggested.
Synthetic Biology: new and emerging issues
The synthetic biology is the application of science, technology and engineering to facilitate and accelerate the design and engineer (manufacture and or modification) biologically based parts or genetic materials, novel devices and systems in living organism to alter living or non-living materials. (European Commission, 2014). Synthetic biology includes the “de novo” synthesis of genetic material and an engineering-based approach to develop components, organisms and products; and, builds on modern biotechnology methodologies and techniques such as high throughput DNA technologies and bioinformatics. Synthetic biology aims to design and engineer biologically based parts, novel devices and systems as well as redesigning existing, natural biological systems (RAE, 2009).
Asian Journal of Basic Science & Research, 2023
Synthetic biology is an interdisciplinary field that focuses on living organisms and systems, employing engineering techniques to create innovative biological devices, systems, and components. It represents the convergence of old and new approaches, bridging the gap between chemistry and biology, with synthetic chemistry laying the foundation for its emergence. At its core, synthetic biology aims to develop and engineer biological systems by bringing together engineers and biologists to design and construct novel biomolecular parts, circuits, and pathways. These constructs are then utilized to reconstruct, reanalyze, and reprogram organisms for various purposes. There are five primary categories within synthetic biology: bioengineering, synthetic genome, protocell synthetic biology, unconventional molecular biology, and in silico techniques. Traditionally, four engineering approaches have been employed in synthetic biology, including top-down, parallel, orthogonal, and bottom-up methods. These approaches provide a systematic and rational way of reassembling and reconstructing biological components, enabling the creation of functional biological devices, systems, and organisms with known, useful, and novel functions. Synthetic biology holds the promise of providing efficient solutions to various significant challenges in the modern world, encompassing areas such as chemicals, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, energy, and bioremediation. By leveraging engineering methods in the realm of biology, synthetic biology benefits from over 50 years of molecular biological and functional genomic research, along with advanced technologies that allow for the analysis, synthesis, assembly, modification, and transfer of genetic components into living organisms. In essence, synthetic biology offers an exciting avenue to unlock the potential of biological systems and revolutionize multiple industries through innovative modifications and breakthrough innovations.
The promise of synthetic biology
Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology, 2006
DNA synthesis has become one of the technological bases of a new concept in biology: synthetic biology. The vision of synthetic biology is a systematic, hierarchical design of artificial, biology-inspired systems using robust, standardized, and well-characterized building blocks. The design concept and examples from four fields of application (genetic circuits, protein design, platform technologies, and pathway engineering) are discussed, which demonstrate the usefulness and the promises of synthetic biology. The vision of synthetic biology is to develop complex systems by simplified solutions using available material and knowledge. Synthetic biology also opens a door toward new biomaterials that do not occur in nature.
Jump-starting life? Fundamental aspects of synthetic biology
The Journal of Cell Biology, 2015
What is life and how could it originate? This question lies at the core of understanding the cell as the smallest living unit. Although we are witnessing a golden era of the life sciences, we are ironically still far from giving a convincing answer to this question. In this short article, I argue why synthetic biology in conjunction with the quantitative sciences may provide us with new concepts and tools to address it.