Understanding the potentials of synthetic biology

The conversion of cells into living therapeutics has already had a revolutionary impact on regenerative medicine and blood transfusion therapies. The discipline that deals with cell engineering is synthetic biology: biological functionalities are modified in order to perform certain applications. In an article published by Nature Reviews, Mingqi Xie and Martin Fussenegger from the Biotechnology and Bioengineering group provide an overview on knowledge, devices and design strategies in synthetic biology.