{"title":"Biological Switches: Past and Future Milestones of Transcription Factor-Based Biosensors.","authors":"Brecht De Paepe, Marjan De Mey","doi":"10.1021/acssynbio.4c00689","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Since the description of the <i>lac</i> operon in 1961 by Jacob and Monod, transcriptional regulation in prokaryotes has been studied extensively and has led to the development of transcription factor-based biosensors. Due to the broad variety of detectable small molecules and their various applications across biotechnology, biosensor research and development have increased exponentially over the past decades. Throughout this period, key milestones in fundamental knowledge, synthetic biology, analytical tools, and computational learning have led to an immense expansion of the biosensor repertoire and its application portfolio. Over the years, biosensor engineering became a more multidisciplinary discipline, combining high-throughput analytical tools, DNA randomization strategies, forward engineering, and advanced protein engineering workflows. Despite these advances, many obstacles remain to fully unlock the potential of biosensor technology. This review analyzes the timeline of key milestones on fundamental research (1960s to 2000s) and engineering strategies (2000s onward), on both the DNA and protein level of biosensors. Moreover, insights into the future perspectives, remaining hurdles, and unexplored opportunities of this promising field are discussed.</p>","PeriodicalId":26,"journal":{"name":"ACS Synthetic Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7000,"publicationDate":"2024-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"ACS Synthetic Biology","FirstCategoryId":"99","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1021/acssynbio.4c00689","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"BIOCHEMICAL RESEARCH METHODS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Since the description of the lac operon in 1961 by Jacob and Monod, transcriptional regulation in prokaryotes has been studied extensively and has led to the development of transcription factor-based biosensors. Due to the broad variety of detectable small molecules and their various applications across biotechnology, biosensor research and development have increased exponentially over the past decades. Throughout this period, key milestones in fundamental knowledge, synthetic biology, analytical tools, and computational learning have led to an immense expansion of the biosensor repertoire and its application portfolio. Over the years, biosensor engineering became a more multidisciplinary discipline, combining high-throughput analytical tools, DNA randomization strategies, forward engineering, and advanced protein engineering workflows. Despite these advances, many obstacles remain to fully unlock the potential of biosensor technology. This review analyzes the timeline of key milestones on fundamental research (1960s to 2000s) and engineering strategies (2000s onward), on both the DNA and protein level of biosensors. Moreover, insights into the future perspectives, remaining hurdles, and unexplored opportunities of this promising field are discussed.
期刊介绍:
The journal is particularly interested in studies on the design and synthesis of new genetic circuits and gene products; computational methods in the design of systems; and integrative applied approaches to understanding disease and metabolism.
Topics may include, but are not limited to:
Design and optimization of genetic systems
Genetic circuit design and their principles for their organization into programs
Computational methods to aid the design of genetic systems
Experimental methods to quantify genetic parts, circuits, and metabolic fluxes
Genetic parts libraries: their creation, analysis, and ontological representation
Protein engineering including computational design
Metabolic engineering and cellular manufacturing, including biomass conversion
Natural product access, engineering, and production
Creative and innovative applications of cellular programming
Medical applications, tissue engineering, and the programming of therapeutic cells
Minimal cell design and construction
Genomics and genome replacement strategies
Viral engineering
Automated and robotic assembly platforms for synthetic biology
DNA synthesis methodologies
Metagenomics and synthetic metagenomic analysis
Bioinformatics applied to gene discovery, chemoinformatics, and pathway construction
Gene optimization
Methods for genome-scale measurements of transcription and metabolomics
Systems biology and methods to integrate multiple data sources
in vitro and cell-free synthetic biology and molecular programming
Nucleic acid engineering.