Synthetic Biology

The past decade has seen tremendous advances in DNA recombination and measurement techniques. These advances have reached a point in which de novo creation of biomolecular circuits that accomplish new functions is now possible, leading to the birth of a new field called synthetic biology. Sophisticated functions that are highly sought in synthetic biology range from recognizing and killing cancer cells, to neutralizing radioactive waste, to efficiently transforming feedstock into fuel, to control the differentiation of tissue cells. To reach these objectives, however, there are a number of open problems that the field has to overcome. Many of these problems require a systemlevel understanding of the dynamical and robustness properties of interacting systems and hence the field of control and dynamical systems theory may highly contribute. In this paper, we review the basic technology employed in synthetic biology, a number of simple modules and complex systems created using this technology, and discuss key system-level problems along with challenging research questions for the field of control theory.