Schmidt Markus, de Lorenzo Víctor
Biofaction KG, 1030 Vienna, Austria.
Systems Biology Program, Centro Nacional de Biotecnología (CNB-CSIC), 28049 Cantoblanco-Madrid, Spain.
Curr Opin Biotechnol. 2016 Apr;38:90-6. doi: 10.1016/j.copbio.2016.01.006. Epub 2016 Feb 10.
Synthetic Biology (SynBio) has brought up again questions on the environmental fate of microorganisms carrying genetic modifications. The growing capacity of editing genomes for deployment of man-made programs opens unprecedented biotechnological opportunities. But the same exacerbate concerns regarding fortuitous or deliberate releases to the natural medium. Most approaches to tackle these worries involve endowing SynBio agents with containment devices for halting horizontal gene transfer and survival of the live agents only at given times and places. Genetic circuits and trophic restraint schemes have been proposed to this end in the pursuit of complete containment. The most promising include adoption of alternative genetic codes and/or dependency on xenobiotic amino acids and nucleotides. But the field has to still overcome serious bottlenecks.
合成生物学（SynBio）再次引发了关于携带基因改造的微生物在环境中的归宿问题。用于部署人造程序的基因组编辑能力不断增强，带来了前所未有的生物技术机遇。但这也加剧了人们对偶然或故意释放到自然环境中的担忧。解决这些担忧的大多数方法都涉及为合成生物学制剂配备遏制装置，以阻止水平基因转移，并使活体仅在特定时间和地点存活。为此，人们提出了遗传回路和营养限制方案，以实现完全遏制。最有前景的方法包括采用替代遗传密码和/或依赖外源氨基酸和核苷酸。但该领域仍需克服严重的瓶颈。
