Synthetic biology is a new interdisciplinary subject established in bioinformatics, DNA synthetic technology, genetics, and systems biology. Synthetic biology is the rational and systematic design/construction of biological systems with desired functionality. One of its most powerful tools is DNA synthesis technology; recently, the cost of gene synthesis has dropped 10 fold over the past 15 years, leading to a boom in the development of synthetic biology. As we understand more about gene synthesis and its applications, the benefits of synthetic biology could reach a wide variety of different fields, including medicine, agriculture, drug development, and bioengineering.

The application of synthetic biology to human health

Synthetic biology technology has potential uses in clinical treatments that can synthesize gene circuits to screen for pathogenic gene or structure variants in diseased animal models. Currently, scientists have synthesized a number of gene circuits in mammalian cells, potentially leading to the treatment and outright prevention of many genetic diseases in humans. Synthetic biology can also lead to treatment for metabolic disorders. For example, Dean et al. incorporated a synthetic gene circuit encoding the glyco-oxylate shunt pathway into mice liver cells, resulting in increased fatty acid oxidation.

The application of synthetic biology to medicine

Synthetic biology is useful to drug screening and discovery, and can be used to discover new drug targeting sites. With the rapid development of synthetic biology, new tools in bioinformatics can be used to analyze potential drug targets. Computational biology and new technology can rapidly identify true protein coding sequences from DNA sequence data, providing accurate predictions of coding vs noncoding sequences.

Synbio Technologies is a DNA technology company that specializes in synthetic biology research. We can artificially design and engineer biological systems and living organisms for the purposes of improving applications for industry or biological research. Synbio Technologies has its own professional synthetic biology platform to provide integrated solutions for all of our customers’ synthetic biology research.