Synthetic biology: Building life to understand and harness it

Prokaryotic systems and single-celled eukaryotic organisms have dominated the field of synthetic biology and revealed important paradigms in cellular biology including the role of feedback, noise, and cooperativity. While translation of synthetic biology to mammalian systems has been slower, with the advent of improved genetic tools for mammalian cells (e.g. gene therapy approaches including CRISPR technologies, AAVs), synthetic circuits are positioned to massively reshape how we study and treat diseases.