BE14CH08-Lu ARI 7 April 2012 16:14 R E V I E W S I N A D V A N C E Synthetic Biology: An Emerging Engineering Discipline Allen Cheng and Timothy K. Lu Synthetic Biology Group, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139; email: timlu@mit.edu Annu. Rev. Biomed. Eng. 2012. 14:155–78 The Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering is online at bioeng.annualreviews.org This article’s doi: 10.1146/annurev-bioeng-071811–150118 Copyright c  2012 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved 1523-9829/12/0815-0155$20.00 Keywords synthetic circuits, synthetic devices, engineering cycle, genetic engineering, engineered organisms, modeling Abstract Over the past decade, synthetic biology has emerged as an engineering discipline for biological systems. Compared with other substrates, biology poses a unique set of engineering challenges resulting from an incomplete understanding of natural biological systems and tools for manipulating them. To address these challenges, synthetic biology is advancing from developing proof-of-concept designs to focusing on core platforms for rational and high-throughput biological engineering. These platforms span the entire biological design cycle, including DNA construction, parts libraries, compu- tational design tools, and interfaces for manipulating and probing synthetic circuits. The development of these enabling technologies requires an engi- neering mindset to be applied to biology, with an emphasis on generalizable techniques in addition to application-specific designs. This review aims to discuss the progress and challenges in synthetic biology and to illustrate ar- eas where synthetic biology may impact biomedical engineering and human health. 155 Review in Advance first posted online on May 7, 2012. (Changes may still occur before final publication online and in print.) Changes may still occur before final publication online and in print Annu. Rev. Biomed. Eng. 2012.14. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on 05/19/12. For personal use only.