Mazraeh Daniel, Di Ventura Barbara
Signaling Research Centres BIOSS and CIBSS, and Institute of Biology II, Faculty of Biology, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany.
Signaling Research Centres BIOSS and CIBSS, and Institute of Biology II, Faculty of Biology, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany.
Curr Opin Microbiol. 2022 Aug;68:102158. doi: 10.1016/j.mib.2022.102158. Epub 2022 May 31.
Synthetic biology is a field of research in which molecular parts (mostly nucleic acids and proteins) are de novo created or modified and then used either alone or in combination to achieve new functions that can help solve the problems of our modern society. In synthetic microbiology, microbes are employed rather than other organisms or cell-free systems. Optogenetics, a relatively recently established technology that relies on the use of genetically encoded photosensitive proteins to control biological processes with high spatiotemporal precision, offers the possibility to empower synthetic (micro)biology applications due to the many positive features that light has as an external trigger. In this review, we describe recent synthetic microbiology applications that made use of optogenetics after briefly introducing the molecular mechanism behind some of the most employed optogenetic tools. We highlight the power and versatility of this technique, which opens up new horizons for both research and industry.
合成生物学是一个研究领域，在该领域中，分子部件（主要是核酸和蛋白质）被重新创造或修饰，然后单独或组合使用，以实现有助于解决现代社会问题的新功能。在合成微生物学中，使用的是微生物而非其他生物体或无细胞系统。光遗传学是一项相对较新的技术，它依靠使用基因编码的光敏蛋白来高时空精度地控制生物过程，由于光作为外部触发因素具有许多积极特性，因此为增强合成（微）生物学应用提供了可能性。在这篇综述中，我们在简要介绍了一些最常用的光遗传学工具背后的分子机制后，描述了最近利用光遗传学的合成微生物学应用。我们强调了这项技术的强大功能和多功能性，它为研究和工业都开辟了新的视野。
