Cell‐based biosensors offer cheap, portable and simple methods of detecting molecules of interest but have yet to be truly adopted commercially. Issues with their performance and specificity initially slowed the development of cell‐based biosensors. With the development of rational approaches to tune response curves, the performance of biosensors has rapidly improved and there are now many biosensors capable of sensing with the required performance. This has stimulated an increased interest in biosensors and their commercial potential. However the reliability, long term stability and biosecurity of these sensors are still barriers to commercial application and public acceptance. Research into overcoming these issues remains active. Here we present the state‐of‐the‐art tools offered by synthetic biology to allow construction of cell‐based biosensors with customisable performance to meet the real world requirements in terms of sensitivity and dynamic range and discuss the research progress to overcome the challenges in terms of the sensor stability and biosecurity fears.

The front cover artwork is provided by the group of Dr. Baojun Wang (The University of Edinburgh). The image shows an engineered bacterial cell containing a genetic amplifier circuit which transforms a weak input signal into a larger easily detectable output signal. The electronics symbols used to illustrate the genetic circuit highlight the programmability of the circuit components enabled by state‐of‐the‐art synthetic biology tools. Read the full text of the Review at 10.1002/cphc.201900739.

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