The PLOS ONE Synthetic Biology Collection: Six Years and Counting

Jean Peccoud,Mark Isalan,Wei Ning Chen

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0043231

Abstract

Since it was launched in 2006, PLOS ONE has published over fifty articles illustrating the many facets of the emerging field of synthetic biology. This article reviews these publications by organizing them into broad categories focused on DNA synthesis and assembly techniques, the development of libraries of biological parts, the use of synthetic biology in protein engineering applications, and the engineering of gene regulatory networks and metabolic pathways. Finally, we review articles that describe enabling technologies such as software and modeling, along with new instrumentation. In order to increase the visibility of this body of work, the papers have been assembled into the PLOS ONE Synthetic Biology Collection (www.ploscollections.org/synbio). Many of the innovative features of the PLOS ONE web site will help make this collection a resource that will support a lively dialogue between readers and authors of PLOS ONE synthetic biology papers. The content of the collection will be updated periodically by including relevant articles as they are published by the journal. Thus, we hope that this collection will continue to meet the publishing needs of the synthetic biology community.

Highlights

Synthetic biology is an emerging transdisciplinary field at the intersection between many engineering and scientific disciplines such as biology, chemical engineering, chemistry, electrical engineering, or computer science
The scientific milestone that inspired the development of synthetic biology is often regarded as the description of two artificial gene networks in the same issue of Nature in 2000 [1,2]
Many synthetic biology authors have benefited from the innovative PLOS ONE editorial policy to publish scientifically sound research, irrespective of its anticipated significance

Summary

Introduction

Synthetic biology is an emerging transdisciplinary field at the intersection between many engineering and scientific disciplines such as biology, chemical engineering, chemistry, electrical engineering, or computer science. The year 2004 marks the emergence of synthetic biology as a scientific community. This is the year of the first synthetic biology conference, the first iGEM competition –where students compete to build biological systems (http://igem.org/) _ and the creation of the synthetic biology page on Wikipedia. The first issue of PLOS ONE included two synthetic biology articles [3,4], marking the beginning of a trend. Many synthetic biology authors have benefited from the innovative PLOS ONE editorial policy to publish scientifically sound research, irrespective of its anticipated significance

Objectives

Findings

Conclusion