合成生物学在生物基塑料制造中的应用

合成生物学是以工程学思想为指导,对天然生物基因组进行改造和重构,合成新的生物元件,构建新的代谢途径,生产新产品或获得新表型的新兴学科。生物基塑料是以天然物质为原料在微生物作用或化学反应下生成的塑料。利用合成生物学改造工程菌株的方法制备合成生物基塑料已经成为学术界和产业界关注的热点。本文综述了合成生物学的发展和重要的合成生物学技术,重点综述了利用合成生物学技术构建聚羟基烷酸酯、尼龙、聚乳酸和丁二酸丁二醇酯等生物基塑料聚合物单体及其衍生物的代谢途径和工程优化领域的研究进展。     

合成生物学研究进展

合成生物学是以工程化设计思路,构建标准化的元器件和模块,改造已存在的天然系统或者从头合成全新的人工生命体系,实现在化学品合成(包括材料、能源和天然化合物)、医学、农业、环境等领域的应用。人们利用基本的生物学元件设计和构建了基因开关、振荡器、放大器、逻辑门、计数器等合成器件,实现对生命系统的重新编程并执行特殊功能。模块化处理生物的代谢途径,并在底盘细胞上进行组装和优化,可以实现大宗化学品和精细化学品的合成。目前人们已经在丁醇、异丁醇、青蒿素和紫杉醇等化合物的生物合成上取得了重要进展。近年来还发展了多种基因组编辑和组装技术,可精确地对基因组进行编辑,人们还成功地合成了噬菌体基因组、支原体基因组和酵母基因组。在未来的50～100年内,合成生物学将对人类的医疗、化学品制造(含药品)、军事产生渐进性的、渗透性的但颠覆性的意义。     

含S，N杂环戊烯桥头的二芳烯光致变色化合物的合成及性质研究

光致变色材料是目前光功能材料领域中研究的热点之一．在众多的光致变色体系中，二芳烯化合物因其良好的热稳定性和抗疲劳性使其在信息光存储及分子光开关等领域有着广泛的应用前景．发展新型二芳烯光致变色分子体系和相关的合成路线以及探索新型二芳烯分子结构与光致变色性质的关系是一个很有吸引力的课题．该论文以发展新型二芳烯光致变色化合物为目标，对分子的设计合成及光致变色性质进行了深入的研究，并对二芳烯化合物在光信息存储和化学传感器方面的应用进行了探索．取得了一些有意义的研究成果：     

中科院成都生物所:苯乙烯单加氧酶在不对称合成中的应用研究取得新进展

环氧化合物是合成许多光学活性药物、农药及一些精细化学品的重要前体物。近年来,科学家已经发展了许多化学和生物催化的不对称环氧化方法制备该类化合物。相较化学催化不对称合成,生物催化具有高选择性和温和的反应条件等特点,被认为是一种更绿色的合成途径。     

放线菌聚酮类化合物的合成生物学研究及生物制造

聚酮化合物具有广泛的药用活性和极高的经济价值,但如何高效、经济、绿色、环保地合成聚酮化合物是目前急需解决的问题。随着合成生物学的发展及分子生物学技术的进步,不断有新的技术和策略被用于聚酮化合物的生物制造。本文介绍了聚酮化合物生物制造中的关键酶、前体物质及代谢途径等,分析了通过CRISPR技术及翻译后修饰代谢工程优化代谢调控网络;通过替换及优化启动子等手段改造与优化代谢途径;通过构建简单、高效的异源表达系统等策略提高聚酮化合物的生物制造效率等。在此基础上对红霉素、阿维菌素、多杀菌素的合成生物学研究的最新进展进行了总结,进而对当前聚酮化合物生物制造面临的产量及效率低下等问题和可能的解决途径,如平衡初级代谢与次级代谢,构建新型、优势底盘细胞及代谢网络的重新设计与改造等进行了展望。     

人工合成微生物混菌体系的研究进展

合成生物学正在从设计构建基本功能元件和模块,逐步向着从头设计人工细胞及构建人工生物群落的方向发展,人工合成微生物混菌体系已经成为未来合成生物学研究的重要方向。本文综述了人工构建微生物群落生态关系、群落时空动态和分布式计算等基础研究的进展。同时,微生物混菌体系在医药、环境、能源等领域发挥着不可替代的作用,人工合成混菌体系在相关领域也表现出巨大的应用潜力。     

半导体合成生物学的研究进展

半导体合成生物学是研究半导体技术与合成生物学之间协同作用的一门交叉学科。其涉及的活细胞-半导体材料杂合体系具有独特的能量和信号转导机制,不仅维持活细胞的代谢能力,而且保留半导体材料的光电学物理特性,在化工、通讯、计算、能源及医疗等领域具有广阔的应用前景。综述了半导体合成生物学在生物催化、智能生物传感以及新型DNA数据存储领域的最新研究进展,讨论了目前研究面临的技术难题及解决方案,旨在为合成生物学和半导体技术这两个影响化工发展的领域提供有价值的参考。     

中科院合成生物学重点实验室在上海成立

中国科学院合成生物学重点实验室日前在上海正式成立。新成立的中科院合成生物学重点实验室将瞄准现代生物科学与技术的前沿,引领我国合成生物学的原创研究与自主创新,建立合成生物学的关键技术平台,重点针对能源、医药和环境等国家重大需求问题,进行生物学元件、反应系统乃至生物个体的设计、改造和重建的研究与开发。该实验室的研究方向包括生物质合成的分子设计、能源植物改造、能源和医药化工产品的高效生物合成。     

共轭二烯的合成研究进展

共轭二烯类化合物是一类重要的有机合成中间体,它广泛的应用于D-A反应、电环化反应、Ziegler-Natta聚合等,被广泛用于医药化工领域。本文以不同的底物出发概述了共轭二烯的合成方法。     

药物化学专论教学中融入逆合成分析策略

药物化学专论从分子水平阐述药物的作用机理、体内代谢过程和制备方法，在药学和生物与医药专业学科领域起着承上启下作用。然而，由于专业课时压缩及研究生扩招出现的少数学生本科阶段没有研修先期课程等问题，时下的课堂教学实践存在相当的庞杂性和挑战性。为激发学生学习热情提升课程教学质量，本课程尝试以药物分子结构为核心将逆合成分析策略引入教学环节，以典型镇静催眠药地西泮的合成为例，利用开环反应特点切断酰胺和烯胺键分别得到2-甲氨基-5-氯二苯酮和2-氨基-5-氯-二苯酮两个关键中间体，设计出四条分别以对甲氨基氯苯、对氯苯胺或对氯硝基苯为起始原料的合成路线，并就对氯硝基苯和苯乙腈为原料制备地西泮的合成工艺进行探讨。实践表明，通过构建药物分子结构和合成路径的联系，有助于培养学生的逆向思维能力，从而提升研究生的药学综合技能和创新意识。     

Application of synthetic biology in manufacture of bio-based plastics

Synthetic biology is a new discipline that uses engineering ideas as a guide to transform and reconstruct natural biological genomes, synthesize new biological components, construct new metabolic routes, and produce novel products or obtain new phenotypes. Bio-based plastics are plastics produced under the action of microorganisms or the chemical reactions using natural materials as raw materials. The usage of synthetic biology to construct engineered strains to produce bio-based plastics has become a hot topic in academia and industry. This paper reviews the development of synthetic biology and important techniques in the field of synthetic biology, focusing on the research progress in the field of metabolic pathways and engineering optimization for the construction of bio-based plastic polymer monomers and derivatives such as polyhydroxyalkanoate, nylon, polylactic acid, and butylene glycol succinate using synthetic biological techniques.     

如何工程化生物学

随着化学学科的发展和应用需求,化学工程应运而生;随着生物学的发展和工程化需求,代表着“生物学第三次革命”的合成生物学也随之诞生。合成生物学,即生物学的工程化,它从工程学角度设计创建元件、器件或模块,以及通过这些元器件改造和优化现有自然生物体系,但是如何对复杂生命进行工程化一直是合成生物学工作者不断探索的重大科学问题。本文系统地阐释了迄今为止工程化生物学的4个特点:①模块化和标准化;②正交性;③鲁棒性;④适配性及其对应研究进展。最后从“设计-构建-测试”循环的研究模式入手提出了今后如何进一步有效地工程化生物学。     

Current State-of-the-Art Toward Chemoenzymatic Synthesis of Polyketide Natural Products

Polyketide natural products have significant promise as pharmaceutical targets for human health and as molecular tools to probe disease and complex biological systems. While the biosynthetic logic of polyketide synthases (PKS) is well-understood, biosynthesis of designer polyketides remains challenging due to several bottlenecks, including substrate specificity constraints, disrupted protein-protein interactions, and protein solubility and folding issues. Focusing on substrate specificity, PKSs are typically interrogated using synthetic thioesters. PKS assembly lines and their products offer a wealth of information when studied in a chemoenzymatic fashion. This review provides an overview of the past two decades of polyketide chemoenzymatic synthesis and their contributions to the field of chemical biology. These synthetic strategies have successfully yielded natural product derivatives while providing critical insights into enzymatic promiscuity and mechanistic activity.     

G‐Quadruplexes as Tools for Synthetic Biology

With the potential to engineer biological systems, synthetic biology is an emerging field that combines various disciplines of sciences. It encompasses combinations of DNA, RNA and protein modules for constructing desired systems and the “rewiring” of existing signalling networks. Despite recent advances, this field still lags behind in the artificial reconstruction of cellular processes, and thus demands new modules and switches to create “genetic circuits”. The widely characterised noncanonical nucleic acid secondary structures, G‐quadruplexes are promising candidates to be used as biological modules in synthetic biology. Structural plasticity and functional versatility are significant G‐quadruplex traits for its integration into a biological system and for diverse applications in synthetic circuits.     

Engineering Bacterial Cellulose by Synthetic Biology

Synthetic biology is an advanced form of genetic manipulation that applies the principles of modularity and engineering design to reprogram cells by changing their DNA. Over the last decade, synthetic biology has begun to be applied to bacteria that naturally produce biomaterials, in order to boost material production, change material properties and to add new functionalities to the resulting material. Recent work has used synthetic biology to engineer several Komagataeibacter strains; bacteria that naturally secrete large amounts of the versatile and promising material bacterial cellulose (BC). In this review, we summarize how genetic engineering, metabolic engineering and now synthetic biology have been used in Komagataeibacter strains to alter BC, improve its production and begin to add new functionalities into this easy-to-grow material. As well as describing the milestone advances, we also look forward to what will come next from engineering bacterial cellulose by synthetic biology.     

Amyloid assemblies: protein legos at a crossroads in bottom-up synthetic biology

One of the major objectives that bottom-up synthetic biology shares with chemical biology is to engineer extant biological molecules to implement novel functionalities in living systems. Proteins, due to their astonishing structural and functional versatility and to their central roles in the biology of cells, should be cornerstones of synthetic biology. In particular, protein amyloid cross-β assemblies constitute one of the most stable, conceptually simple and universal macromolecular architectures ever found in Nature and thus have enormous potential to be explored. This article focuses on the concepts behind the use of the amyloid cross-β-structural framework as a synthetic biology part, underlining recent basic findings and ideas. The pros and the cons associated with the polymorphism and the cellular toxicity of protein amyloids are also discussed, keeping in mind the possible suitability of these protein assemblies for scaffolding novel orthogonal macromolecular devices in vivo.     

Microfluidic technologies for synthetic biology

Microfluidic technologies have shown powerful abilities for reducing cost, time, and labor, and at the same time, for increasing accuracy, throughput, and performance in the analysis of biological and biochemical samples compared with the conventional, macroscale instruments. Synthetic biology is an emerging field of biology and has drawn much attraction due to its potential to create novel, functional biological parts and systems for special purposes. Since it is believed that the development of synthetic biology can be accelerated through the use of microfluidic technology, in this review work we focus our discussion on the latest microfluidic technologies that can provide unprecedented means in synthetic biology for dynamic profiling of gene expression/regulation with high resolution, highly sensitive on-chip and off-chip detection of metabolites, and whole-cell analysis.     

Autonomous and Assisted Control for Synthetic Microbiology

The control of microbes and microbial consortia to achieve specific functions requires synthetic circuits that can reliably cope with internal and external perturbations. Circuits that naturally evolved to regulate biological functions are frequently robust to alterations in their parameters. As the complexity of synthetic circuits increases, synthetic biologists need to implement such robust control “by design”. This is especially true for intercellular signaling circuits for synthetic consortia, where robustness is highly desirable, but its mechanisms remain unclear. Cybergenetics, the interface between synthetic biology and control theory, offers two approaches to this challenge: external (computer-aided) and internal (autonomous) control. Here, we review natural and synthetic microbial systems with robustness, and outline experimental approaches to implement such robust control in microbial consortia through population-level cybergenetics. We propose that harnessing natural intercellular circuit topologies with robust evolved functions can help to achieve similar robust control in synthetic intercellular circuits. A “hybrid biology” approach, where robust synthetic microbes interact with natural consortia and—additionally—with external computers, could become a useful tool for health and environmental applications.