As a key focus of synthetic biology,building a minimal artificial cell has given rise to many discussions.A synthetic minimal cell will provide an appropriate chassis to integrate functional synthetic parts,devices and systems with functions that cannot generally be found in nature.The design and construction of a functional minimal genome is a key step while building such a cell/chassis since all the cell functions can be traced back to the genome.Kinds of approaches,based on bioinformatics and molecular biology,have been developed and proceeded to derive essential genes and minimal gene sets for the synthetic minimal genome.Experiments about streamlining genomes of model bacteria revealed genome reduction led to unanticipated beneficial properties,such as high electroporation efficiency and accurate propagation of recombinant genes and plasmids that were unstable in other strains.Recent achievements in chemical synthesis technology for large DNA segments together with the rapid development of the wholegenome sequencing,have transferred synthesis of genes to assembly of the whole genomes based on oligonucleotides,and thus created strong preconditions for synthesis of artificial minimal genome.Here in this article,we review briefly the history and current state of research in this field and summarize the main methods for making a minimal genome.We also discuss the impacts of minimized genome on metabolism and regulation of artificial cell.
Synthetic biology is an emerging field,which,since its birth,has shown great value and potential in many fields including medicine,energy,environment and agriculture.It is also important for the study of the origin and evolution of life.Since the publication of the first synthetic cell in May,2010,synthetic biology again attracts high attention and leads to extensive discussions all over the world.There have been a number of researches and achievements on synthetic biology in the United States and European countries.While in China,so far there is no systematic research on synthetic biology.In order to promote the development of this new discipline in China,we organized this review to systematically introduce the concept and research content of synthetic biology,summarize the achievements,and investigate the current situation in both China and abroad.We also analyzed the opportunities and challenges in synthetic biology,and looked forward to the future development of synthetic biology,especially its future development in China.
