Work

Synthetic biology devices for in vitro and in vivo diagnostics

Year: 2015

Type: review

Abstract: 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.

Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1508521112

Authors: Shimyn Slomovic, Keith Pardee, James J. Collins

Institutions: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Broad Institute

Language: English

Topic: Biosensors and Analytical Detection

Subfield: Biomedical Engineering

Field: Engineering

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funders: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Air Force Office of Scientific Research

Awards: G277562485, G4445756990