Early synthetic biology designs, namely the genetic toggle switch and repressilator, showed that regulatory components can be characterized and assembled to bring about complex, electronics-inspired behaviours in living systems (for example, memory storage and timekeeping).
Through the characterization and assembly of genetic parts and biological building blocks, many more devices have been constructed, including switches, memory elements, oscillators, pulse generators, digital logic gates, filters and communication modules.
Advances in the field are now allowing expansion beyond small gene networks to the realm of larger biological programs, which hold promise for a wide range of applications, including biosensing, therapeutics and the production of biofuels, pharmaceuticals and biomaterials.
Synthetic biosensing circuits consist of sensitive elements that bind analytes and transducer modules that mobilize cellular responses. Balancing these two modules involves engineering modularity and specificity into the various circuits.
Biosensor sensitive elements include environment-responsive promoters (transcriptional), RNA aptamers (translational) and protein receptors (post-translational).
Biosensor transducer modules include engineered gene networks (transcriptional), non-coding regulatory RNAs (translational) and protein signal-transduction circuits (post-translational).
The contributions of synthetic biology to therapeutics include: engineered networks and organisms for disease-mechanism elucidation, drug-target identification, drug-discovery platforms, therapeutic treatment, therapeutic delivery, and drug production and access.
In the microbial production of biofuels and pharmaceuticals, synthetic biology has supplemented traditional genetic and metabolic engineering efforts by aiding the construction of optimized biosynthetic pathways.
Optimizing metabolic flux through biosynthetic pathways is traditionally accomplished by driving the expression of pathway enzymes with strong, inducible promoters. New synthetic approaches include the rapid diversification of various pathway components, the rational and model-guided assembly of pathway components, and hybrid solutions.
Advances in the synthetic biology field are allowing an expansion beyond small gene networks towards larger biological programs that hold promise for a wide range of applications, including biosensing, therapeutics and the production of biofuels, pharmaceuticals and biomaterials.
Synthetic biology is bringing together engineers and biologists to design and build novel biomolecular components, networks and pathways, and to use these constructs to rewire and reprogram organisms. These re-engineered organisms will change our lives over the coming years, leading to cheaper drugs, 'green' means to fuel our cars and targeted therapies for attacking 'superbugs' and diseases, such as cancer. The de novo engineering of genetic circuits, biological modules and synthetic pathways is beginning to address these crucial problems and is being used in related practical applications.