Bøger i Synthesis Lectures on Synthetic Biology serien

The science of biology celebrates the discovery and understanding of biological systems that already exist in nature. In parallel, the engineering of biology must learn how to make use of our understanding of the natural world to design and build new useful biological systems. "e;"e;Synthetic biology"e;"e; represents one example of recent work to engineer biological systems. This emerging field aims to replace the ad hoc process of assembling biological systems by primarily developing tools to assemble reliable-but-complex living organisms from standard components that can later be reused in new combination. The focus of this book is "e;"e;genome refactoring,"e;"e; one of several approaches to manage the complexity of a biological system in which the goal is to redesign the genetic elements that encode a living form--preserving the function of that form but encoding it with a genome far easier to study and extend. This book presents genome refactoring in two ways: as an important aspect of the emerging field of synthetic biology and as a powerful teaching tool to train would be professionals in the subject. Chapters focus on the overarching goals of synthetic biology and their alignment with the motivations and achievements in genome engineering; the engineering frameworks of refactoring, including genome synthesis, standardization of biological parts, and abstraction; a detailed description of the bacteriophages that have been refactored up to this point; and the methods of refactoring and contexts for that work drawn from the bacteriophage M13. Overall, these examples offer readers the potential for synthetic biology and the areas in need of further research. If successful, synthetic biology and genome refactoring could address any number of persistent societal needs, including sustainable energy, affordable and effective medicine, and green manufacturing practices. Table of Contents: Tools for Genome Engineering and Synthetic Biology / Bacteriophage as Templates for Refactoring / Methods/Teaching Protocols for M13 Reengineering / Writing and Speaking as Biological Engineers / Summary and Future Directions / Appendix A / Appendix B / Appendix C

Bacterial reporters are live, genetically engineered cells with promising application in bioanalytics. They contain genetic circuitry to produce a cellular sensing element, which detects the target compound and relays the detection to specific synthesis of so-called reporter proteins (the presence or activity of which is easy to quantify). Bioassays with bacterial reporters are a useful complement to chemical analytics because they measure biological responses rather than total chemical concentrations. Simple bacterial reporter assays may also replace more costly chemical methods as a first line sample analysis technique. Recent promising developments integrate bacterial reporter cells with microsystems to produce bacterial biosensors. This lecture presents an in-depth treatment of the synthetic biological design principles of bacterial reporters, the engineering of which started as simple recombinant DNA puzzles, but has now become a more rational approach of choosing and combining sensing, controlling and reporting DNA 'parts'. Several examples of existing bacterial reporter designs and their genetic circuitry will be illustrated. Besides the design principles, the lecture also focuses on the application principles of bacterial reporter assays. A variety of assay formats will be illustrated, and principles of quantification will be dealt with. In addition to this discussion, substantial reference material is supplied in various Annexes. Table of Contents: Short History of the use of Bacteria for Biosensing and Bioreporting / Genetic Engineering Concepts / Measuring with Bioreporters / Epilogue