Piecing together a puzzle
نویسنده
چکیده
Synthetic biology is a new research field that comprises many different projects, approaches and definitions, which, at first glance, do not apparently have much in common. These approaches include the generation of bioengineered bacteria, artificial protocells or synthetic genomes, as well as pure in silico models of protocells or regulatory and metabolic pathways, all of which are products of synthetic biology. This Viewpoint tries to put together the various pieces by proposing five categories or subfields of synthetic biology and looking for their common denominators. The five categories are bioengineering, synthetic genomics, protocell synthetic biology, unnatural molecular biology and in silico approaches. For societal and ethical assessments of synthetic biology, it is important to consider both the differences and the similarities between the branches of synthetic biology in order to distinguish between questions that affect the field as a whole and those that are specific to individual categories.
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تاریخ انتشار 2013