Synthetic biology devices for in vitro and in vivo diagnostics

There is a growing need to enhance our capabilities in medical and environmental diagnostics. Synthetic biologists have begun to focus their biomolecular engineering approaches toward this goal, offering promising results that could lead to the development of new classes of inexpensive, rapidly depl...

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Published inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS Vol. 112; no. 47; pp. 14429 - 14435
Main Authors Slomovic, Shimyn, Keith Pardee, James J. Collins
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States National Academy of Sciences 24.11.2015
National Acad Sciences
Subjects
Animals
Biological Sciences
biosensing
Biosensing Techniques - instrumentation
diagnostic techniques
Diagnostics
Gene Regulatory Networks
genes
Humans
Laboratory equipment
monitoring
nanobiotechnology
Pathogens
Pathology, Molecular
Physical Sciences
Sensors
SPECIAL FEATURE: PERSPECTIVE
Synthetic biology
Synthetic Biology - methods
synthetic gene networks
synthetic gene networks
biosensing
synthetic biology
diagnostics
nanobiotechnology
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Summary:There is a growing need to enhance our capabilities in medical and environmental diagnostics. Synthetic biologists have begun to focus their biomolecular engineering approaches toward this goal, offering promising results that could lead to the development of new classes of inexpensive, rapidly deployable diagnostics. Many conventional diagnostics rely on antibody-based platforms that, although exquisitely sensitive, are slow and costly to generate and cannot readily confront rapidly emerging pathogens or be applied to orphan diseases. Synthetic biology, with its rational and short design-to-production cycles, has the potential to overcome many of these limitations. Synthetic biology devices, such as engineered gene circuits, bring new capabilities to molecular diagnostics, expanding the molecular detection palette, creating dynamic sensors, and untethering reactions from laboratory equipment. The field is also beginning to move toward in vivo diagnostics, which could provide near real-time surveillance of multiple pathological conditions. Here, we describe current efforts in synthetic biology, focusing on the translation of promising technologies into pragmatic diagnostic tools and platforms.
Bibliography:http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1508521112
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1S.S. and K.P. contributed equally to this work.
Edited by Robert Langer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, and approved June 16, 2015 (received for review May 6, 2015)
Author contributions: S.S., K.P., and J.J.C. wrote the paper.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.1508521112