Principles of Genetic Circuit Design

By Jennifer A. N. Brophy, Christopher A. Voigt. Nature Methods, 2014

904 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Cells navigate environments, communicate and build complex patterns by initiating gene expression in response to specific signals. Engineers seek to harness this capability to program cells to perform tasks or create chemicals and materials that match the complexity seen in nature. This Review describes new tools that aid the construction of genetic circuits. Circuit dynamics can be influenced by the choice of regulators and changed with expression 'tuning knobs'. We collate the failure modes encountered when assembling circuits, quantify their impact on performance and review mitigation efforts. Finally, we discuss the constraints that arise from circuits having to operate within a living cell. Collectively, better tools, well-characterized parts and a comprehensive understanding of how to compose circuits are leading to a breakthrough in the ability to program living cells for advanced applications, from living therapeutics to the atomic manufacturing of functional materials.

Subfields: Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8aec0df176f2c4c06f9b67d021eec83585cc8af0

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Citations in the corpus

Large-scale de novo DNA synthesis: technologies and applications (2014, background): “Many researchers in synthetic biology are focused on building and optimizing genetic networks to control cellular behavior and metabolic pathways for chemical production 100 .”
A mechanistic link between cellular trade-offs, gene expression and growth (2015, positive): “Exploiting the trade-offs for host-aware design of synthetic circuits A key goal in synthetic biology is to construct complex biochemical circuits with predictable functions [9, 28].”