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Meeting Report

Nature Chemical Biology 1, 304–307 (1 November 2005) | doi:10.1038/nchembio1105-304

Programming cellular function

Christopher A Voigt & Jay D Keasling

An aim of synthetic biology is to program new cellular functions using well-characterized genetic components. This requires the construction of synthetic sensors that receive environmental information, new circuits to integrate and interpret the signals and mechanisms to link the circuit output to control cellular processes.