(585ap) Cell-Free Synthetic Biology: An Emerging Strategy to Revolutionize the Biomedical Industry

Advances in gene editing technology (e.g., CRISPR) and sequencing technology have endowed the biologist with unprecedented power to program cells at will. The ability of synthetic biology to engineer biological functions hold great promise for applications ranging from life science to biofuel research. For the most part, synthetic biology is still tied to the living cell. One major advantage of using the living cell is its self-reproduction. However, the daunting complexity of living cells and the barriers of cell membrane make engineering difficult, and therefore make synthetic biology face four insurmountable challenges: hard to standardize, unwieldy complexity, incompatibility, and variability. From the standpoint of synthetic biology, it is most desirable for these problems to be overcome using a systematic and standardized set of solutions.

To address these challenges, we adopt a cell-free synthetic biology strategy. Cell-free synthetic biology is emerging as a powerful interdisciplinary approach aimed to harness and expand the capabilities of natural biological systems without using intact cells. Our research lies on developing and applying cell-free systems and synthetic biology technologies to engineer DNAs, RNAs, proteins, pathways, and networks for addressing most daunting challenges in human health. To this end, our current research interests center on three distinct yet related areas, including development of fully automated medical diagnostics and therapeutics, non-natural modification of biopharmaceutical macromolecules, and assembly of bio-inspired molecular machines.