Cell-Free Synthetic Biology: Engineering Beyond the Cell

Overview

Journal Cold Spring Harb Perspect Biol

Specialties Biology
Molecular Biology

Date 2016 Oct 16

PMID 27742731

Citations 62

Authors

Jessica G Perez

Jessica C Stark

Michael C Jewett

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Cell-free protein synthesis (CFPS) technologies have enabled inexpensive and rapid recombinant protein expression. Numerous highly active CFPS platforms are now available and have recently been used for synthetic biology applications. In this review, we focus on the ability of CFPS to expand our understanding of biological systems and its applications in the synthetic biology field. First, we outline a variety of CFPS platforms that provide alternative and complementary methods for expressing proteins from different organisms, compared with in vivo approaches. Next, we review the types of proteins, protein complexes, and protein modifications that have been achieved using CFPS systems. Finally, we introduce recent work on genetic networks in cell-free systems and the use of cell-free systems for rapid prototyping of in vivo networks. Given the flexibility of cell-free systems, CFPS holds promise to be a powerful tool for synthetic biology as well as a protein production technology in years to come.

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