title: Approaches to chemical synthetic biology.
abstract: Synthetic biology is first represented in terms of two complementary aspects, the bio-engineering one, based on the genetic manipulation of extant microbial forms in order to obtain forms of life which do not exist in nature; and the chemical synthetic biology, an approach mostly based on chemical manipulation for the laboratory synthesis of biological structures that do not exist in nature. The paper is mostly devoted to shortly review chemical synthetic biology projects currently carried out in our laboratory. In particular, we describe: the minimal cell project, then the "Never Born Proteins" and lastly the Never Born RNAs. We describe and critically analyze the main results, emphasizing the possible relevance of chemical synthetic biology for the progress in basic science and biotechnology.
authors.affiliation: Biology Department, University of Roma Tre, Viale Guglielmo Marconi 446, 00146 Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Cristiano
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Chiarabelli
authors.forename: Pasquale
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Stano
authors.forename: Fabrizio
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Anella
authors.forename: Paolo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Carrara
authors.forename: Pier Luigi
authors.initials: PL
authors.lastname: Luisi
mesh_terms: D001704:Biopolymers / Q000096:biosynthesis / Q000737:chemistry; D002477:Cells / Q000166:cytology / Q000378:metabolism; D002621:Chemistry / Q000379:methods*; D058615:Synthetic Biology / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D001704:Biopolymers