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A partnership between biology and engineering

Nature Biotechnology volume 22, pages 1211–1214 (2004)Cite this article

This article explores the potentially beneficial outcomes of a partnership between systems biology and synthetic biology. This assessment is a challenge due to the vague definition and unrealistic claims made for systems biology, as well as by the lack of an explicitly stated distinction between synthetic biology and the engineering of biological systems practiced since the development of recombinant DNA. Here, I suggest that one might be able to add meaning to the concept of systems biology by remembering older conceptions of experimental systems. In biology, the original word used for the study of system function is physiology. It may be possible in the near term to understand the quantitative physiology of certain intracellular systems. I then try to determine the distinguishing attributes of synthetic biology. Any body of theory and experimental capability that enables quantitative prediction of a system's behavior will be applicable to synthetic biology in that it will enable prediction of the behavior of human-designed biological artifacts before those are instantiated in DNA code. If the practitioners are honest with one another about the limits of their abilities, this intersection of science and engineering can spur the development of both.

Engineered biological systems and synthetic biology

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Drew Endy, Tom Knight, Gerald Sussman, Rob Carlson, Larry Lok and Harvey Eisen for useful discussions over many years, and to Paul Rabinow, Orna Resnekov, Myron Williams and the anonymous reviewers for criticisms that greatly improved this manuscript. Work is supported under Alpha Project at the Center for Genomic Experimentation and Computation, an NIH Center of Excellence in Genomic Science, supported by grant P50 HG02370 to R.B. from the National Human Genome Research Institute.

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  1. The Molecular Sciences Institute, 2168 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, 94704, California, USA

    Roger Brent

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Brent, R. A partnership between biology and engineering. Nat Biotechnol 22, 1211–1214 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt1004-1211

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