It's an analog world

摘要

The engineering of biological networks, a discipline called synthetic biology, has seen remarkable progress since its inception in 2000. The fact that we can now design simple but functional circuits in vivo is probably one of the most important aspects of this progress — it suggests that our biophysical understanding of the cellular milieu is largely correct, even if many details remain to be resolved. The significance of this should not be underestimated, because it means that predictive engineering of new cellular networks and systems is possible. Until now, approaches to synthetic biology have been greatly influenced by the digital computing technology that we use every day.