Rational engineering of synthetic microbial systems: from single cells to consortia

• Published in: Current opinion in microbiology Vol. 45; pp. 92 - 99
• Main Authors: Bittihn, Philip, Din, M Omar, Tsimring, Lev S, Hasty, Jeff
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Elsevier Ltd 01-10-2018
• Subjects: Bacteria - genetics; Bacteria - metabolism; Bioengineering - trends; Fermentation; Microbial Consortia; Synthetic Biology - trends
• ISSN: 1369-5274; 1879-0364
• DOI: 10.1016/j.mib.2018.02.009

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•Synthetic biology approaches enable microbial systems engineering.•Versatile tools rapidly expand regulatory engineering capabilities.•Modular components and management of load effects facilitate robust gene circuits.•Ecology-level control opens up new possibilities for applications.
One promise of synthetic biology is to provide solutions for biomedical and industrial problems by rational design of added functionality in living systems. Microbes are at the forefront of this biological engineering endeavor due to their general ease of handling and their relevance in many potential applications from fermentation to therapeutics. In recent years, the field has witnessed an explosion of novel regulatory tools, from synthetic orthogonal transcription factors to posttranslational mechanisms for increased control over the behavior of synthetic circuits. Tool development has been paralleled by the discovery of principles that enable increased modularity and the management of host–circuit interactions. Engineered cell-to-cell communication bridges the scales from intracellular to population-level coordination. These developments facilitate the translation of more than a decade of circuit design into applications.