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ABSTRACT The emerging field of synthetic biology is a novel biological discipline at the interface between traditional biology, chemistry, and engineering sciences. Synthetic biology aims at the rational design of complex synthetic biological devices and systems with desired properties by combining compatible, modular biological parts in a systematic manner. While the first engineered systems were mainly proof-of-principle studies to demonstrate the power of the modular engineering approach of synthetic biology, subsequent systems focus on applications in the health, environmental, and energy sectors. This review describes recent approaches for biomedical applications that were developed along the synthetic biology design hierarchy, at the level of individual parts, of devices, and of complex multicellular systems. It describes how synthetic biological parts can be used for the synthesis of drug-delivery tools, how synthetic biological devices can facilitate the discovery of novel drugs, and how multicellular synthetic ecosystems can give insight into population dynamics of parasites and hosts. These examples demonstrate how this new discipline could contribute to novel solutions in the biopharmaceutical industry.
THE AIM OF SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY is to rationally design devices, systems, and organisms with desired innovative and useful functions (Slusarczyk, Lin, and Weiss 2012).To achieve this aim, synthetic biology uses a concept similar to engineering sciences: well-characterized and standardized modular biological building blocks are reassembled in a systematic and rational manner to generate complex devices and systems with a predicted function. In the past, molecular biological research in combination with intense work in new research areas like systems biology and functional genomics revealed a large inventory of multifaceted modular biological parts that are now in the toolboxes of synthetic biologists. Due to significant progress in technologies for the synthesis, analysis, assembly, and modification of genetic components, compatible modular biological parts can be easily combined into synthetic biological devices,which in turn can be assembled into complex synthetic biological systems.With the help of this hierarchy of parts, devices, and systems, synthetic biologists are able to construct multistep signal transduction and processing networks (Jakobus,Wend, and Weber 2012; Slusarczyk, Lin, andWeiss 2012).While the first synthetic biological devices and systems had a proof-of-principle character, the field of synthetic biology is currently moving towards useful therapeutic applications (Weber and Fussenegger 2012).
In this article we review recent work where the modular...