QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s): Year:  Vol:  Page:

This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Drubin, D. A. Articles by Silver, P. A. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Drubin, D. A. Articles by Silver, P. A. Related Content Systems Biology Social Bookmarking                   What's this?

REVIEW

Designing biological systems

¹ Department of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA; ² EMD Lexigen Research Center, Billerica, Massachusetts 01821, USA

The design of artificial biological systems and the understanding of their natural counterparts are key objectives of the emerging discipline of synthetic biology. Toward both ends, research in synthetic biology has primarily focused on the construction of simple devices, such as transcription-based oscillators and switches. Construction of such devices should provide us with insight on the design of natural systems, indicating whether our understanding is complete or whether there are still gaps in our knowledge. Construction of simple biological systems may also lay the groundwork for the construction of more complex systems that have practical utility. To realize its full potential, biological systems design borrows from the allied fields of protein design and metabolic engineering. In this review, we describe the scientific accomplishments in this field, as well as its forays into biological part standardization and education of future biological designers.

[Keywords: Biological engineering; genetic engineering; metabolic engineering; protein design; synthetic biology]

EMAIL pamela_silver{at}hms.harvard.edu; FAX (617) 432-5012.

Article is online at http://www.genesdev.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gad.1507207

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				M.A. Marchisio and J. Stelling Computational design of synthetic gene circuits with composable parts Bioinformatics, September 1, 2008; 24(17): 1903 - 1910. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				T. Morimoto, R. Kadoya, K. Endo, M. Tohata, K. Sawada, S. Liu, T. Ozawa, T. Kodama, H. Kakeshita, Y. Kageyama, et al. Enhanced Recombinant Protein Productivity by Genome Reduction in Bacillus subtilis DNA Res, April 1, 2008; 15(2): 73 - 81. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				S. R. Schmidl, C. Hames, and J. Stulke Expression of Mycoplasma Proteins Carrying an Affinity Tag in M. pneumoniae Allows Rapid Purification and Circumvents Problems Related to the Aberrant Genetic Code Appl. Envir. Microbiol., December 1, 2007; 73(23): 7799 - 7801. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				C. M. Ajo-Franklin, D. A. Drubin, J. A. Eskin, E. P.S. Gee, D. Landgraf, I. Phillips, and P. A. Silver Rational design of memory in eukaryotic cells Genes & Dev., September 15, 2007; 21(18): 2271 - 2276. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]