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The emerging age of cell‐free synthetic biology
Author(s) -
Smith Mark Thomas,
Wilding Kristen M.,
Hunt Jeremy M.,
Bennett Anthony M.,
Bundy Bradley C.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
febs letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.593
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1873-3468
pISSN - 0014-5793
DOI - 10.1016/j.febslet.2014.05.062
Subject(s) - synthetic biology , biology , computational biology , cell free protein synthesis , systems biology , computer science , nanotechnology , biochemical engineering , microbiology and biotechnology , genetics , engineering , materials science , protein biosynthesis
The engineering of and mastery over biological parts has catalyzed the emergence of synthetic biology. This field has grown exponentially in the past decade. As increasingly more applications of synthetic biology are pursued, more challenges are encountered, such as delivering genetic material into cells and optimizing genetic circuits in vivo . An in vitro or cell‐free approach to synthetic biology simplifies and avoids many of the pitfalls of in vivo synthetic biology. In this review, we describe some of the innate features that make cell‐free systems compelling platforms for synthetic biology and discuss emerging improvements of cell‐free technologies. We also select and highlight recent and emerging applications of cell‐free synthetic biology.