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Piecing together a puzzle
Author(s) -
Deplazes Anna
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
embo reports
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.584
H-Index - 184
eISSN - 1469-3178
pISSN - 1469-221X
DOI - 10.1038/embor.2009.76
Subject(s) - biology , evolutionary biology , computational biology
Synthetic biology is a new research field that comprises many different projects, approaches and definitions, which, at first glance, do not apparently have much in common. These approaches include the generation of bioengineered bacteria, artificial protocells or synthetic genomes, as well as pure in silico models of protocells or regulatory and metabolic pathways, all of which are products of synthetic biology. This Viewpoint tries to put together the various pieces by proposing five categories or subfields of synthetic biology and looking for their common denominators. The five categories are bioengineering, synthetic genomics, protocell synthetic biology, unnatural molecular biology and in silico approaches. For societal and ethical assessments of synthetic biology, it is important to consider both the differences and the similarities between the branches of synthetic biology in order to distinguish between questions that affect the field as a whole and those that are specific to individual categories.> Bioengineering, as part of synthetic biology, is the design of entirely new signalling pathways, including multiple genes and regulatory elements…The various definitions of synthetic biology shown in Sidebar A indicate that it is not a uniform discipline. Several commentators and scientists each have individual and varying definitions or classifications (Benner & Sismour, 2005; de Lorenzo et al , 2006; Forster & Church, 2007; O'Malley et al , 2008). The five categories proposed in this article take into consideration various aspects of these earlier classifications: in particular, the scientific disciplines from which the different branches of synthetic biology emerged, the stated goals and aims that researchers are striving for, and the techniques and strategies that they use to achieve these goals (Table 1). These categories should help to make societal assessments of synthetic biology more specific and precise by clarifying which issues concern which branches.### Sidebar A | Definitions of synthetic biology1. “Synthetic biology is (A) the design …