Synthetic Biology From IGEM to the Artificial Cell |
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| Author:
| Porcar, Manuel
Peretó, Juli
Peretó, Juli |
| Series title: | SpringerBriefs in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Ser. |
| ISBN: | 978-94-017-9382-7 |
| Publication Date: | Sep 2014 |
| Publisher: | Springer London, Limited
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| Book Format: | Ebook |
| List Price: | USD $54.99 |
Book Description:
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Synthetic Biology (SB) is a revolutionary discipline with a vast range of practical applications, but is SB research really based on engineering principles? Does it contributing to the artificial synthesis of life or does it utilise approaches sufficiently advanced to fall outside the scope of biotechnology or metabolic engineering? This volume reviews the development of SB and includes the major milestones of the discipline, the 'top-down' and 'bottom-up' approaches towards the...
More Description
Synthetic Biology (SB) is a revolutionary discipline with a vast range of practical applications, but is SB research really based on engineering principles? Does it contributing to the artificial synthesis of life or does it utilise approaches sufficiently advanced to fall outside the scope of biotechnology or metabolic engineering? This volume reviews the development of SB and includes the major milestones of the discipline, the 'top-down' and 'bottom-up' approaches towards the construction of an artificial cell and the development of the "iGEM" competition. We conclude that SB is an emerging field with extraordinary technological potential, but that most research projects actually are an extension of metabolic engineering since the complexity of living organisms, their tight dependence on evolution and our limited knowledge of the interactions between the molecules, actually make life difficult to engineer.