Abstract
Synthetic Biology is the ‘Engineering of Biology’ – it aims to use a forward-engineering design cycle based on specifications, modelling, analysis, experimental implementation, testing and validation to modify natural or design new, synthetic biology systems so that they behave in a predictable fashion. Motivated by the need for truly plug-and-play synthetic biological components, we present a comprehensive review of ways in which the various parts of a biological system can be modified systematically. In particular, we review the list of ‘dials’ that are available to the designer and discuss how they can be modelled, tuned and implemented. The dials are categorized according to whether they operate at the global, transcriptional, translational or post-translational level and the resolution that they operate at. We end this review with a discussion on the relative advantages and disadvantages of some dials over others.
Highlights
The primary goal of Synthetic Biology is to create new or add additional functionality to biological systems by constructing new parts, or modifying existing biological systems (Purnick & Weiss, 2009)
One of the main efforts of Synthetic Biology is on building genetic systems in micro-organisms, because of their relative simplicity but as it is envisioned that small genetic circuits can potentially be used as a foundation for building more complex systems (Andrianantoandro et al, 2006)
Synthetic Biology has been described as the ‘Engineering of Biology’, a systematic design cycle is still not realized to its full potential, limiting the advancement of the field in terms of functionality, reliability and size of the genetic systems (Purnick & Weiss, 2009)
Summary
The primary goal of Synthetic Biology is to create new or add additional functionality to biological systems by constructing new parts, or modifying existing biological systems (Purnick & Weiss, 2009) Central to this goal is the idea that the synthetic organism is designed following a systematic design framework with a specific objective in mind designed a priori. Such design objectives can be formulated in a quantitative manner so that the performance of the designed component can be quantified and compared to the original design specification This design framework is required both to improve reliability of individual biological components and to build functioning genetic systems with a larger number of interconnected parts (Purnick & Weiss, 2009), both considered to be current challenges of Synthetic Biology. An improved forwardengineering framework would consist of a mathematical model of the system chosen in the conceptual design stage, 067975 G 2013 SGM Printed in Great Britain
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