title: Synthetic biology devices for in vitro and in vivo diagnostics.
abstract: There is a growing need to enhance our capabilities in medical and environmental diagnostics. Synthetic biologists have begun to focus their biomolecular engineering approaches toward this goal, offering promising results that could lead to the development of new classes of inexpensive, rapidly deployable diagnostics. Many conventional diagnostics rely on antibody-based platforms that, although exquisitely sensitive, are slow and costly to generate and cannot readily confront rapidly emerging pathogens or be applied to orphan diseases. Synthetic biology, with its rational and short design-to-production cycles, has the potential to overcome many of these limitations. Synthetic biology devices, such as engineered gene circuits, bring new capabilities to molecular diagnostics, expanding the molecular detection palette, creating dynamic sensors, and untethering reactions from laboratory equipment. The field is also beginning to move toward in vivo diagnostics, which could provide near real-time surveillance of multiple pathological conditions. Here, we describe current efforts in synthetic biology, focusing on the translation of promising technologies into pragmatic diagnostic tools and platforms.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Medical Engineering & Science, Department of Biological Engineering, and Synthetic Biology Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139;
authors.forename: Shimyn
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Slomovic
authors.affiliation: Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Boston, MA 02115;
authors.forename: Keith
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Pardee
authors.affiliation: Institute for Medical Engineering & Science, Department of Biological Engineering, and Synthetic Biology Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139; Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Boston, MA 02115; Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139; Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA 02142 jimjc@mit.edu.
authors.forename: James J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Collins
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D015374:Biosensing Techniques / Q000295:instrumentation; D053263:Gene Regulatory Networks; D006801:Humans; D057089:Pathology, Molecular; D058615:Synthetic Biology / Q000379:methods*
keywords: biosensing; diagnostics; nanobiotechnology; synthetic biology; synthetic gene networks