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Building synthetic systems to learn nature's design principles.
Eric A Davidson1, Oliver P F Windram, Travis S Bayer
1Centre for Synthetic Biology and Innovation, Imperial College London, London, UK. e.davidson@imperial.ac.uk
Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology
|July 24, 2012
Summary
Synthetic biology enables researchers to engineer biological circuits, offering insights into evolution and adaptation. This approach explores how genetic systems shape biological networks and constrain evolutionary processes.
Area of Science:
- Evolutionary Systems Biology
- Synthetic Biology
- Genetic Engineering
Background:
- Evolution shapes biological systems, but the adaptive significance of regulatory, metabolic, and signaling circuits remains unclear.
- Understanding how circuit architecture constrains or promotes adaptation to new environments is crucial.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review strategies for constructing synthetic genetic systems.
- To explore how evolutionary design principles advance synthetic biology.
- To understand trade-offs constraining adaptation and shaping biological networks.
Main Methods:
- Experimentally rewiring existing biological circuits using genetic engineering.
- Constructing novel synthetic genetic circuits in living cells.
- Analyzing small genetic regulatory systems to infer evolutionary principles.
Main Results:
- Synthetic systems allow exploration of genotype-phenotype and fitness landscapes.
- Building synthetic systems provides insights into adaptation trade-offs.
- Engineering biological circuits illuminates constraints on evolutionary processes.
Conclusions:
- Synthetic biology offers a powerful platform for testing evolutionary hypotheses.
- The interplay between evolutionary theory and engineering design can reveal fundamental limits of biological systems.
- Future genome-scale synthetic biology will enable validation of complex evolutionary models and recreation of ancestral systems.
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