Synthetic biology approaches in drug discovery and pharmaceutical biotechnology

Abstract

Synthetic biology is the attempt to apply the concepts of engineering to biological systems with the aim to create organisms with new emergent properties. These organisms might have desirable novel biosynthetic capabilities, act as biosensors or help us to understand the intricacies of living systems. This approach has the potential to assist the discovery and production of pharmaceutical compounds at various stages. New sources of bioactive compounds can be created in the form of genetically encoded small molecule libraries. The recombination of individual parts has been employed to design proteins that act as biosensors, which could be used to identify and quantify molecules of interest. New biosynthetic pathways may be designed by stitching together enzymes with desired activities, and genetic code expansion can be used to introduce new functionalities into peptides and proteins to increase their chemical scope and biological stability. This review aims to give an insight into recently developed individual components and modules that might serve as parts in a synthetic biology approach to pharmaceutical biotechnology.

Using promoter libraries to reduce metabolic burden due to plasmid-encoded proteins in recombinant Escherichia coli

“…The recent advances on synthetic biology have allowed to produce novel compounds (9), including high--performance enzymes with applications in the biotechnological sector such as the non ribosomal peptides synthetases (NRPs) and the polyketide synthetases (PKSs) (10) (11). In this context, aldolases constitute one of the most interesting groups of enzymes employed for organic synthesis of carbohydrates, aminoacids and hydroxyacids (12).…”

Synthetic Biology Triggers New Era of Antibiotics Development

“…Generally, the related coding genes clustered together on the genome in modularity, and each catalytic domain has certain substrate or product fl exibility, which facilitates interchange of domains between different sources or pathways to generate a large natural product derived compound library for antibiotics screening. Other important technological progress, such as DNA synthesis (Bugl et al 2007 ) , DNA manipulation technology for pathway/whole genome assembly (Isaacs et al 2011 ;Shao and Zhao 2009 ;Wingler and Cornish 2011 ;Zhang et al 1998 ) , and in silico microbial system simulation Price et al 2003 ;Weber et al 2009 ;Yadav et al 2009 ) , has led to encouraging achievements in production of fi ne chemicals (Keasling 2010 ) , bio-fuels (Clomburg and Gonzalez 2010 ) and pharmaceuticals (Medema et al 2011 ;Neumann and Neumann-Staubitz 2010 ) . Moreover, the yield and productivity often could increase hundreds fold after multiple cycles of strains improvement.…”

“…To create new arti fi cial organisms harboring most desirable properties, synthetic biology is to integrate different speci fi c parts into a biological background by rational designing and engineering endeavor in a standardized pattern (Agapakis and Silver 2009 ;Na et al 2010 ;Neumann and Neumann-Staubitz 2010 ) . Of course, a rich subassembly wrapper containing various biological parts and well-equipped toolboxes to carry out our devises are two indispensable prerequisites.…”

Synthetic Biology & Bioinformatics Prospects in the Cancer Arena

“…For this purpose, it may be necessary to include other enzymes or metabolic pathways that synthesize precursors for the metabolite required in a synthetic network (Leonard et al, 2008;McArthur IV & Fong, 2010). Many polyketides and nonribosomal peptides are being used as antibiotic, anti-tumor and immunosuppressant drugs (Neumann & Neumann-Staubitz, 2010). In order to produce them in heterologous hosts, assembly of all the necessary genes that make up the synthetic pathways is essential.…”