Synthetic biology: From the first synthetic cell to see its current situation and future development

Zhang, LiuYan; Chang, SuHua; Wang, Jing

The definition of synthetic biology keeps evolving with a decade of development. So far there is no official or formal definition. According to the definition from the Synthetic Biology Community (http://syntheticbiology.org/), which is the most widely accepted concept, synthetic biology is the design and construction of new biological parts, devices and systems and the re-design of existing natural biological systems for useful purposes. Synthetic biology on the one hand is important to explore the origin and evolution of life, on the other hand, it has a broad range of applications ranging from health care (diagnostics and therapeutics), environment (biosensors, bioremediation), energy (biofuel) to agriculture (optimized food), through engineering the biological systems or modules [2] [3] [4] [5] . One of the key features of synthetic biology is to apply the engineering principles to biological studies. The pipeline for engineering design, described as specification, design, modeling, implementation and testing/validation, was introduced into the design and construction of biological systems (Figure 1 ). Under the principle of synthetic biology, the complex life system can be treated as an organic combination of various functional elements. Synthetic biology starts from specification and standardization of biological parts, and then assembles the parts into devices and systems step by step [6] . The standardization of biological parts helps to improve the controllability and predictability of designed modules. Figure 2 shows the feature of synthetic biology and its difference in comparison to traditional genetic engineering.