Pawson Tony, Linding Rune
Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute, Mt. Sinai Hospital, 600 University Avenue, Toronto, ON, Canada M5G 1X5.
FEBS Lett. 2005 Mar 21;579(8):1808-14. doi: 10.1016/j.febslet.2005.02.013.
During the last decades, biology has decomposed cellular systems into genetic, functional and molecular networks. It has become evident that these networks consist of components with specific functions (e.g., proteins and genes). This has generated a considerable amount of knowledge and hypotheses concerning cellular organization. The idea discussed here is to test the extent of this knowledge by reconstructing, or reverse engineering, new synthetic biological systems from known components. We will discuss how integration of computational methods with proteomics and engineering concepts might lead us to a deeper and more abstract understanding of signal transduction systems. Designing and successfully introducing synthetic proteins into cellular pathways would provide us with a powerful research tool with many applications, such as development of biosensors, protein drugs and rewiring of biological pathways.
在过去几十年里，生物学已将细胞系统分解为遗传、功能和分子网络。显而易见，这些网络由具有特定功能的组件（如蛋白质和基因）组成。这已产生了大量有关细胞组织的知识和假说。这里所讨论的想法是，通过从已知组件重建或逆向工程新的合成生物系统，来检验这些知识的范围。我们将讨论计算方法与蛋白质组学及工程概念的整合如何能使我们对信号转导系统有更深入、更抽象的理解。设计并成功地将合成蛋白质引入细胞通路，将为我们提供一种具有众多应用的强大研究工具，如生物传感器的开发、蛋白质药物以及生物通路的重新布线。
