Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2011 Jun;5(1-2):1-9.
doi: 10.1007/s11693-011-9084-5. Epub 2011 Aug 5.

The ten grand challenges of synthetic life

Manuel Porcar, Antoine Danchin, Victor de Lorenzo, Vitor A Dos Santos, Natalio Krasnogor, Steen Rasmussen, Andrés Moya

The ten grand challenges of synthetic life

Manuel Porcar et al. Syst Synth Biol. 2011 Jun.

Abstract

The construction of artificial life is one of the main scientific challenges of the Synthetic Biology era. Advances in DNA synthesis and a better understanding of regulatory processes make the goal of constructing the first artificial cell a realistic possibility. This would be both a fundamental scientific milestone and a starting point of a vast range of applications, from biofuel production to drug design. However, several major issues might hamper the objective of achieving an artificial cell. From the bottom-up to the selection-based strategies, this work encompasses the ten grand challenges synthetic biologists will have to be aware of in order to cope with the task of creating life in the lab.

Keywords: Artificial life; Challenges; Streamlined genomes; Synthetic biology.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Bedau MA. Artificial life: organization, adaptation and complexity from the bottom up. Trends Cogn Sci. 2003;7:505–512. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2003.09.012. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Bedau MA, McCaskill JS, Packard N, Rasmussen S. Living technology: exploiting life’s principles in technology. Artif Life. 2010;16:89–97. doi: 10.1162/artl.2009.16.1.16103. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Bennett CH. Logical depth and physical complexity. In: Herken R, editor. The Universal Turing Machine: a half-century survey. London: Oxford University Press; 1988. pp. 227–257.
    1. Chan LY, Kosuri S, Endy D (2005) Refactoring bacteriophage T7. Mol Syst Biol 1:2005.0018 (2005) - PMC - PubMed
    1. Cronin L, et al. The imitation game a computational chemical approach to recognizing life. Nature Biotechnol. 2006;24:1203–1206. doi: 10.1038/nbt1006-1203. - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources