Synthetic biology: a new pharmaceutical era is coming?

May 6, 2015 / BIOON / -- in the latest issue of current operation in biotechnology, British scientists Rainer Breitling and Eriko Takano reviewed the latest progress in the field of synthetic biology In this review, they reviewed the development of synthetic biology The maturity of synthetic biology enables scientists and industry to synthesize drug molecules and other high value-added compounds based on the microbial system From the concept of how to carry out large-scale gene transformation and chemical molecular synthesis path design, to the industrial application level, synthetic biology has made great achievements Scientists also mentioned many new computational biology methods and experimental methods, and introduced the impact of these tools on synthetic biology The development of the pharmaceutical industry is bound to require investment of time, energy and funds How to find and synthesize efficient drug molecules is of great significance, which is also the focus of synthetic biology However, why does synthetic biology play such a role? There are two main reasons First, many effective drug molecules are natural products, such as early antibiotics The synthesis of these natural molecules is the natural way of organisms, so it is relatively simple to synthesize such products through microbial system Secondly, the complexity of organism determines that the pathway of molecular synthesis has complex multi-level regulation, and the bioengineering method of synthetic biology can study and utilize these regulation mechanisms well For such a microbial system, there are actually many unknowns waiting for us to discover Nowadays, with the cost of sequencing technology reduced, microbial genome and macro genome sequencing become more convenient I believe that in the near future, the field of synthetic biology is just like the new continent waiting for us to explore How to apply synthetic biology better? Synthetic biology is an engineering, it also has the basic characteristics of engineering Like the circuit board and standard components in the information revolution era, synthetic biology is gradually developing its own standard components - "BioBrick" (for example, iGEM is an annual synthetic biology competition for college students, aiming to promote the standardization of "BioBricks", which plays a great role in promoting synthetic biology.) Through the assembly of basic components, a new biosynthesis path will be possible There are many methods and principles in the development of standardized synthetic biological components For example, we can explore and utilize biosynthetic pathways in known biological genomes, or we can design new biosynthetic pathways from scratch It is also important to develop standardized expression system and gene transfer system, because it will make the expression elements transfer in different organisms, which can make the synthesized molecules come from different organisms and have different biological activities At the same time, the complex biosynthetic pathway needs a lot of fine design and "system adjustment" Finally, the authors write, "synthetic biology has entered a new era." The microbial based biosynthesis system is becoming more and more mature, the "BioBrick" is becoming more and more standardized, and a large number of standard libraries of biosynthesis components are about to be established In the future, the biopharmaceutical industry, with the promotion of synthetic biology, has seen a new dawn This article is the original compilation of Biovalley, welcome to reprint! Please indicate the source of the reprint and attach the original link For more information, please download Biovalley app Doi: 10.1016/j.copbio.2015.02.004 PMC: synthetic biology advances for pharmaceutical production synthetic biology enables a new generation of micro engineering for the biological production of phaematerials and other high-value chemicals This review presents an overview of other high-value chemicals recent advances in the field， describing new computational and experimental tools for the discovery， optimization and production of bioactive molecules， and outlining progress towards the application of these tools to pharmaceutical production systems