Synthetic Biology : From iGEM to the Artificial Cell

Synthetic Biology (SB) is a revolutionary discipline with a vast range of practical applications, but is SB research really based on engineering principles? Does it contributing to the artificial synthesis of life or does it utilise approaches sufficiently advanced to fall outside the scope of biotechnology or metabolic engineering? This volume reviews the development of SB and includes the major milestones of the discipline, the ?top-down? and ?bottom-up? approaches towards the construction of an artificial cell and the development of the ?iGEM? competition. We conclude that SB is an emerging field with extraordinary technological potential, but that most research projects actually are an extension of metabolic engineering since the complexity of living organisms, their tight dependence on evolution and our limited knowledge of the interactions between the molecules, actually make life difficult to engineer.

Author: Manuel Porcar, Juli Peretó

Publisher: Springer

Publication Date: Sep 23, 2014

Number of Pages: NA pages

Language: English

Binding: Paperback

ISBN-10: 9401793816

ISBN-13: 9789401793810