Synthetic biology-based optogenetic approaches to control therapeutic designer cells

Abstract

Optogenetics uses light as a traceless inducer to remotely control cellular behavior with high safety and spatiotemporal precision, and its implementation for therapeutic synthetic biology enable customizable user-defined remedial outputs to be generated from suitably engineered cells. Here, we focus on non-neural optogenetics, describing the tools and strategies available to engineer light-responsive, therapeutic mammalian designer cells and highlighting recent advances in design and translational applications, including cell and gene therapies. We also discuss current limitations in engineering genetically encoded light-sensitive systems and suggest some possible solutions.