title: Plant synthetic biology.
abstract: Plant synthetic biology is an emerging field that combines engineering principles with plant biology toward the design and production of new devices. This emerging field should play an important role in future agriculture for traditional crop improvement, but also in enabling novel bioproduction in plants. In this review we discuss the design cycles of synthetic biology as well as key engineering principles, genetic parts, and computational tools that can be utilized in plant synthetic biology. Some pioneering examples are offered as a demonstration of how synthetic biology can be used to modify plants for specific purposes. These include synthetic sensors, synthetic metabolic pathways, and synthetic genomes. We also speculate about the future of synthetic biology of plants.
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Sciences, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996-4561, USA.
authors.forename: Wusheng
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Sciences, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996-4561, USA; BioEnergy Science Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831-6037, USA. Electronic address: nealstewart@utk.edu.
authors.forename: C Neal
authors.initials: CN
authors.lastname: Stewart
mesh_terms: D005818:Genetic Engineering / Q000379:methods; D010944:Plants / Q000378:metabolism*; D058615:Synthetic Biology / Q000379:methods*
keywords: design cycle; enabling tools; engineering principles; pioneering applications; plant synthetic biology