A Review of CADs, Languages and Data Models for Synthetic Biology

Abstract

Synthetic biology is to apply engineering standards to the biology. It has two main aims; first to design and construct biological systems in order to extend the understanding of how they work, and second, to design biological systems for performing valuable tasks like medications synthesis and biofuels production. Due to the complex nature of the biological systems, and similar to the engineering fields, computational methods and computer aided design (CAD) tools, are required to handle this complexity. In this review, existing CADs, languages and data models for synthetic biology are explored. The goal is to provide an insight for the synthetic biologists to take advantage of the available computational tools and to find out the gaps to work on.