title: The emerging age of cell-free synthetic biology.
abstract: The engineering of and mastery over biological parts has catalyzed the emergence of synthetic biology. This field has grown exponentially in the past decade. As increasingly more applications of synthetic biology are pursued, more challenges are encountered, such as delivering genetic material into cells and optimizing genetic circuits in vivo. An in vitro or cell-free approach to synthetic biology simplifies and avoids many of the pitfalls of in vivo synthetic biology. In this review, we describe some of the innate features that make cell-free systems compelling platforms for synthetic biology and discuss emerging improvements of cell-free technologies. We also select and highlight recent and emerging applications of cell-free synthetic biology.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Engineering, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA.
authors.forename: Mark Thomas
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Engineering, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA.
authors.forename: Kristen M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Wilding
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Engineering, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA.
authors.forename: Jeremy M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Hunt
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Engineering, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA.
authors.forename: Anthony M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Bennett
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Engineering, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA. Electronic address: bundy@byu.edu.
authors.forename: Bradley C
authors.initials: BC
authors.lastname: Bundy
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002474:Cell-Free System; D006801:Humans; D058615:Synthetic Biology / Q000379:methods*
keywords: Cell-free; Cell-free protein synthesis; Cell-free synthetic biology; Gene circuits; Synthetic biology