Abstract
Synthetic biology emerged as an engineering discipline to design and construct artificial biological systems. Synthetic biological designs aim to achieve specific biological behavior, which can be exploited for biotechnological, medical, and industrial purposes. In addition, mimicking natural systems using well-characterized biological parts also provides powerful experimental systems to study evolution at the molecular and systems level. A strength of synthetic biology is to go beyond nature’s toolkit, to test alternative versions and to study a particular biological system and its phenotype in isolation and in a quantitative manner. Here, we review recent work that implemented synthetic systems, ranging from simple regulatory circuits, rewired cellular networks to artificial genomes and viruses, to study fundamental evolutionary concepts. In particular, engineering, perturbing or subjecting these synthetic systems to experimental laboratory evolution provides a mechanistic understanding on important evolutionary questions, such as: Why did particular regulatory network topologies evolve and not others? What happens if we rewire regulatory networks? Could an expanded genetic code provide an evolutionary advantage? How important is the structure of genome and number of chromosomes? Although the field of evolutionary synthetic biology is still in its teens, further advances in synthetic biology provide exciting technologies and novel systems that promise to yield fundamental insights into evolutionary principles in the near future.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Acar, M., Mettetal, J. T., & van Oudenaarden, A. (2008). Stochastic switching as a survival strategy in fluctuating environments. Nature Genetics, 40(4), 471–475.
Ackermann, M. (2015). A functional perspective on phenotypic heterogeneity in microorganisms. Nature Reviews Microbiology, 13(8), 497–508.
Agarwal, K. L., et al. (1970). Total synthesis of the gene for an alanine transfer ribonucleic acid from yeast. Nature, 227(5253), 27–34.
Ajo-Franklin, C. M., et al. (2007). Rational design of memory in eukaryotic cells. Genes & Development, 21(18), 2271–2276.
Anosova, I., et al. (2016). The structural diversity of artificial genetic polymers. Nucleic Acids Research, 44(3), 1007–1021.
Arnold, F. H. (2010). How proteins adapt: Lessons from directed evolution. Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology, 74(0), 41–46.
Arnoldini, M., et al. (2014). Bistable expression of virulence genes in Salmonella leads to the formation of an antibiotic-tolerant subpopulation. PLoS Biology, 12(8), e1001928.
Arranz-Gibert, P., Vanderschuren, K., & Isaacs, F. J. (2018). Next-generation genetic code expansion. Current Opinion in Chemical Biology, 46, 203–211.
Bacher, J. M., et al. (2004). Evolving new genetic codes. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 19(2), 69–75.
Bachmann, B. O. (2016). Applied evolutionary theories for engineering of secondary metabolic pathways. Current Opinion in Chemical Biology, 35, 133–141.
Barbier, I., Perez-Carrasco, R., & Schaerli, Y. (2020). Controlling spatiotemporal pattern formation in a concentration gradient with a synthetic toggle switch. Molecular Systems Biology, 16(6), 611.
Bashor, C. J., & Collins, J. J. (2018). Understanding biological regulation through synthetic biology. Annual Review of Biophysics, 47, 399–423.
Bashor, C. J., et al. (2010). Rewiring cells: Synthetic biology as a tool to interrogate the organizational principles of living systems. Annual Review of Biophysics, 39, 515–537.
Baumstark, R., et al. (2015). The propagation of perturbations in rewired bacterial gene networks. Nature Communications, 6, 10105.
Becskei, A., & Serrano, L. (2000). Engineering stability in gene networks by autoregulation. Nature, 405, 590–593.
Blain, J. C., & Szostak, J. W. (2014). Progress toward synthetic cells. Annual Review of Biochemistry, 83, 615–640.
Blomberg, R., et al. (2013). Precision is essential for efficient catalysis in an evolved Kemp eliminase. Nature, 503(7476), 418–421.
Blount, B. A., et al. (2018). Rapid host strain improvement by in vivo rearrangement of a synthetic yeast chromosome. Nature Communications, 9(1), 1932.
Bódi, Z., et al. (2017). Phenotypic heterogeneity promotes adaptive evolution. PLoS Biology, 15(5), e2000644.
Boeke, J. D., et al. (2016). The genome project-write. Science, 353(6295), 126–127.
Briscoe, J., & Thérond, P. P. (2013). The mechanisms of Hedgehog signalling and its roles in development and disease. Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, 14(7), 416–429.
Buddingh, B. C., & van Hest, J. C. M. (2017). Artificial cells: Synthetic compartments with life-like functionality and adaptivity. Accounts of Chemical Research, 50(4), 769–777.
Butterfield, G. L., et al. (2017). Evolution of a designed protein assembly encapsulating its own RNA genome. Nature, 552(7685), 415–420.
Cameron, D. E., Bashor, C. J., & Collins, J. J. (2014). A brief history of synthetic biology. Nature Reviews Microbiology, 12(5), 381–390.
Cello, J., Paul, A. V., & Wimmer, E. (2002). Chemical synthesis of poliovirus cDNA: Generation of infectious virus in the absence of natural template. Science, 297(5583), 1016–1018.
Chari, R., & Church, G. M. (2017). Beyond editing to writing large genomes. Nature Reviews Genetics, 18(12), 749–760.
Chau, A. H., et al. (2012). Designing synthetic regulatory networks capable of self-organizing cell polarization. Cell, 151(2), 320–332.
Chin, J. W. (2014). Expanding and reprogramming the genetic code of cells and animals. Annual Review of Biochemistry, 83(1), 379–408.
Chin, J. W. (2017). Expanding and reprogramming the genetic code. Nature, 550(7674), 53–60.
Chin, J. W., et al. (2003). An expanded eukaryotic genetic code. Science, 301(5635), 964–967.
Ciliberti, S., Martin, O. C., & Wagner, A. (2007). Robustness can evolve gradually in complex regulatory gene networks with varying topology. PLoS Computational Biology, 3(2), e15.
Citorik, R. J., Mimee, M., & Lu, T. K. (2014). Bacteriophage-based synthetic biology for the study of infectious diseases. Current Opinion in Microbiology, 19, 59–69.
Cobb, R. E., Si, T., & Zhao, H. (2012). Directed evolution: An evolving and enabling synthetic biology tool. Current Opinion in Chemical Biology, 16(3-4), 285–291.
Cobb, R. E., Sun, N., & Zhao, H. (2013). Directed evolution as a powerful synthetic biology tool. Methods, 60(1), 81–90.
Cotterell, J., & Sharpe, J. (2010). An atlas of gene regulatory networks reveals multiple three-gene mechanisms for interpreting morphogen gradients. Molecular Systems Biology, 6, 1–14.
Crocker, J., & Ilsley, G. R. (2017). Using synthetic biology to study gene regulatory evolution. Current Opinion in Genetics & Development, 47, 91–101.
Dai, J., et al. (2020). Sc3.0: Revamping and minimizing the yeast genome. Genome Biology, 21(1), 205.
Davidson, E. A., Windram, O. P. F., & Bayer, T. S. (2012). Building synthetic systems to learn nature’s design principles. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, 751, 411–429.
Davies, J. (2017). Using synthetic biology to explore principles of development. Development, 144(7), 1146–1158.
de Lorenzo, V. (2018). Evolutionary tinkering vs. rational engineering in the times of synthetic biology. Life Sciences, Society and Policy, 14(1), 18.
Dean, A. M., & Thornton, J. W. (2007). Mechanistic approaches to the study of evolution: The functional synthesis. Nature Reviews Genetics, 8(9), 675–688.
Duarte, J. M., Barbier, I., & Schaerli, Y. (2017). Bacterial microcolonies in gel beads for high-throughput screening of libraries in synthetic biology. ACS Synthetic Biology, 6(11), 1988–1995.
Elowitz, M. B., & Leibler, S. (2000). A synthetic oscillatory network of transcriptional regulators. Nature, 403(6767), 335–338.
Esvelt, K. M., Carlson, J. C., & Liu, D. R. (2011). A system for the continuous directed evolution of biomolecules. Nature, 472(7344), 499–503.
Fischer, E. C., et al. (2020). New codons for efficient production of unnatural proteins in a semisynthetic organism. Nature Chemical Biology, 16, 570–576.
Forster, A. C., & Church, G. M. (2006). Towards synthesis of a minimal cell. Molecular Systems Biology, 2, 45.
Fredens, J., et al. (2019). Total synthesis of Escherichia coli with a recoded genome. Nature, 569(7757), 514–518.
Friedland, A. E., et al. (2009). Synthetic gene networks that count. Science, 324(5931), 1199–1202.
Gach, P. C., et al. (2017). Droplet microfluidics for synthetic biology. Lab on a Chip, 17(20), 3388–3400.
Gardner, T. S., Cantor, C. R., & Collins, J. J. (2000). Construction of a genetic toggle switch in Escherichia coli. Nature, 403(6767), 339–342.
Gibson, D. G., et al. (2010). Creation of a bacterial cell controlled by a chemically synthesized genome. Science, 329(5987), 52–56.
Giger, L., et al. (2013). Evolution of a designed retro-aldolase leads to complete active site remodeling. Nature Chemical Biology, 9(8), 494–498.
Glass, J. I., et al. (2006). Essential genes of a minimal bacterium. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103(2), 425–430.
Göpfrich, K., Platzman, I., & Spatz, J. P. (2018). Mastering complexity: Towards bottom-up construction of multifunctional eukaryotic synthetic cells. Trends in Biotechnology, 36(9), 938–951.
Greig, D. (2009). Reproductive isolation in Saccharomyces. Heredity, 102(1), 39–44.
Guet, C. C., et al. (2002). Combinatorial synthesis of genetic networks. Science, 296(5572), 1466–1470.
Haimovich, A. D., Muir, P., & Isaacs, F. J. (2015). Genomes by design. Nature Reviews Genetics, 16(9), 501–516.
Hammerling, M. J., et al. (2014). Bacteriophages use an expanded genetic code on evolutionary paths to higher fitness. Nature Chemical Biology, 10(3), 178–180.
Haseltine, E. L., & Arnold, F. H. (2007). Synthetic gene circuits: Design with directed evolution. Annual Review of Biophysics and Biomolecular Structure, 36(1), 1–19.
Hill, M. S., Zande, P. X. T. V., & Wittkopp, P. J. (2020). Molecular and evolutionary processes generating variation in gene expression. Nature Reviews Genetics, 22, 203–215.
Hochrein, L., et al. (2018). L-SCRaMbLE as a tool for light-controlled Cre-mediated recombination in yeast. Nature Communications, 9(1), 1931.
Holland, S. L., et al. (2014). Phenotypic heterogeneity is a selected trait in natural yeast populations subject to environmental stress. Environmental Microbiology, 16(6), 1729–1740.
Hoshika, S., et al. (2019). Hachimoji DNA and RNA: A genetic system with eight building blocks. Science, 363, 884–887.
Hutchison, C. A., et al. (2016). Design and synthesis of a minimal bacterial genome. Science, 351(6280), aad6253.
Ichihashi, N., et al. (2013). Darwinian evolution in a translation-coupled RNA replication system within a cell-like compartment. Nature Communications, 4, 2494.
Isaacs, F. J., et al. (2011). Precise manipulation of chromosomes in vivo enables genome-wide codon replacement. Science, 333(6040), 348–353.
Isalan, M., et al. (2008). Evolvability and hierarchy in rewired bacterial gene networks. Nature, 452(7189), 840–845.
Jiménez, A., et al. (2015). Dynamics of gene circuits shapes evolvability. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 112(7), 2103–2108.
Joyce, G. F., & Szostak, J. W. (2018). Protocells and RNA self-replication. Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology, 10(9), a034801.
Kaltenbach, M., & Tokuriki, N. (2014). Dynamics and constraints of enzyme evolution. Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B: Molecular and Developmental Evolution, 322(7), 468–487.
Kaneko, K. (2007). Evolution of robustness to noise and mutation in gene expression dynamics. PLoS One, 2(5), e434.
Kannan, K., & Gibson, D. G. (2017). Yeast genome, by design. Science, 355(6329), 1024–1025.
Koonin, E. V., & Novozhilov, A. S. (2017). Origin and evolution of the universal genetic code. Annual Review of Genetics, 51(1), 45–62.
Kuwahara, H., & Soyer, O. S. (2012). Bistability in feedback circuits as a byproduct of evolution of evolvability. Molecular Systems Biology, 8, 564.
Lagator, M., et al. (2017). Regulatory network structure determines patterns of intermolecular epistasis. eLife, 6, 1–22.
Lajoie, M. J., et al. (2013). Genomically recoded organisms expand biological functions. Science, 342(6156), 357–360.
Lavickova, B., Laohakunakorn, N., & Maerkl, S. J. (2020). A partially self-regenerating synthetic cell. Nature Communications, 11, 1–11.
Lee, K. Y., et al. (2018). Photosynthetic artificial organelles sustain and control ATP-dependent reactions in a protocellular system. Nature Biotechnology, 36(6), 530–535.
Lehner, B. (2011). Molecular mechanisms of epistasis within and between genes. Trends in Genetics, 27(8), 323–331.
Lemire, S., Yehl, K. M., & Lu, T. K. (2018). Phage-based applications in synthetic biology. Annual Review of Virology, 5(1), 453–476.
Li, P., et al. (2018). Morphogen gradient reconstitution reveals Hedgehog pathway design principles. Science, 360(6388), 543–548.
Liti, G. (2018). Yeast chromosome numbers minimized using genome editing. Nature, 560(7718), 317–318.
Liu, C. C., & Schultz, P. G. (2010). Adding new chemistries to the genetic code. Annual Review of Biochemistry, 79, 413–444.
Liu, C. C., et al. (2018a). Toward an orthogonal central dogma. Nature Chemical Biology, 14(2), 103–106.
Liu, W., et al. (2018b). Rapid pathway prototyping and engineering using in vitro and in vivo synthetic genome SCRaMbLE-in methods. Nature Communications, 9, 1–12.
Luo, J., et al. (2018a). Karyotype engineering by chromosome fusion leads to reproductive isolation in yeast. Nature, 560(7718), 392–396.
Luo, Z., et al. (2018b). Identifying and characterizing SCRaMbLEd synthetic yeast using ReSCuES. Nature Communications, 9(1), 1930.
Luo, Z., et al. (2021). Compacting a synthetic yeast chromosome arm. Genome Biology, 22, 1–18.
Ma, L., et al. (2019). SCRaMbLE generates evolved yeasts with increased alkali tolerance. Microbial Cell Factories, 18, 1–11.
Ma, N. J., & Isaacs, F. J. (2016). Genomic recoding broadly obstructs the propagation of horizontally transferred genetic elements. Cell Systems, 3(2), 199–207.
Malyshev, D. A., et al. (2014). A semi-synthetic organism with an expanded genetic alphabet. Nature, 509(7500), 385–388.
Mangan, S., & Alon, U. (2003). Structure and function of the feed-forward loop network motif. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100(21), 11980–11985.
Matsumura, S., et al. (2016). Transient compartmentalization of RNA replicators prevents extinction due to parasites. Science, 354(6317), 1293–1296.
Mizuuchi, R., & Ichihashi, N. (2018). Sustainable replication and coevolution of cooperative RNAs in an artificial cell-like system. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2(10), 1654–1660.
Mukai, T., et al. (2017). Rewriting the genetic code. Annual Review of Microbiology, 71, 557–577.
Mukherji, S., & van Oudenaarden, A. (2009). Synthetic biology: Understanding biological design from synthetic circuits. Nature Reviews Genetics, 10(12), 859–871.
Mushegian, A. R., & Koonin, E. V. (1996). A minimal gene set for cellular life derived by comparison of complete bacterial genomes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 93(19), 10268–10273.
Neumann, H., et al. (2010). Encoding multiple unnatural amino acids via evolution of a quadruplet-decoding ribosome. Nature, 464(7287), 441–444.
Nghe, P., et al. (2020). Predicting evolution using regulatory architecture. Annual Review of Biophysics, 49(1), 181–197.
Nielsen, J., & Keasling, J. D. (2016). Engineering cellular metabolism. Cell, 164(6), 1185–1197.
Niu, W., Schultz, P. G., & Guo, J. (2013). An expanded genetic code in mammalian cells with a functional quadruplet codon. ACS Chemical Biology, 8(7), 1640–1645.
Nyerges, Á., et al. (2018). Directed evolution of multiple genomic loci allows the prediction of antibiotic resistance. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(25), E5726–E5735.
Paaby, A. B., & Rockman, M. V. (2013). The many faces of pleiotropy. Trends in Genetics, 29(2), 66–73.
Packer, M. S., & Liu, D. R. (2015). Methods for the directed evolution of proteins. Nature Reviews Genetics, 16(7), 379–394.
Pál, C., Papp, B., & Pósfai, G. (2014). The dawn of evolutionary genome engineering. Nature Reviews Genetics, 15(7), 504–512.
Payne, J. L., & Wagner, A. (2019). The causes of evolvability and their evolution. Nature Reviews Genetics, 20(1), 24–38.
Peisajovich, S. G. (2012). Evolutionary synthetic biology. ACS Synthetic Biology, 1(6), 199–210.
Pinheiro, V. B., & Holliger, P. (2012). The XNA world: Progress towards replication and evolution of synthetic genetic polymers. Current Opinion in Chemical Biology, 16(3-4), 245–252.
Pinheiro, V. B., et al. (2012). Synthetic genetic polymers capable of heredity and evolution. Science, 336(6079), 341–344.
Purnick, P. E. M., & Weiss, R. (2009). The second wave of synthetic biology: From modules to systems. Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, 10(6), 410–422.
Raman, R., Pinto, C. S., & Sonawane, M. (2018). Polarized organization of the cytoskeleton: Regulation by cell polarity proteins. Journal of Molecular Biology, 430(19), 3565–3584.
Richardson, S. M., et al. (2017). Precise, automated control of conditions for high-throughput growth of yeast and bacteria with eVOLVER. Science, 355(6329), 1040–1044.
Rockman, M. V., & Kruglyak, L. (2006). Genetics of global gene expression. Nature Reviews Genetics, 7(11), 862–872.
Ruder, W. C., Lu, T., & Collins, J. J. (2011). Synthetic biology moving into the clinic. Science, 333(6047), 1248–1252.
Salathé, M., Van Cleve, J., & Feldman, M. W. (2009). Evolution of stochastic switching rates in asymmetric fitness landscapes. Genetics, 182(4), 1159–1164.
Sánchez-Romero, M. A., & Casadesús, J. (2013). Contribution of phenotypic heterogeneity to adaptive antibiotic resistance. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111(1), 355–360.
Santos-Moreno, J., & Schaerli, Y. (2018). Using synthetic biology to engineer spatial patterns. Advanced Biosystems, 12, 1800280.
Santos-Moreno, J., & Schaerli, Y. (2020a). Changing the biological Rosetta stone: The (commercial) potential of recoded microbes. Microbial Biotechnology, 13(1), 11–13.
Santos-Moreno, J., & Schaerli, Y. (2020b). CRISPR-based gene expression control for synthetic gene circuits. Biochemical Society Transactions, 48(5), 1979–1993.
Santos-Moreno, J., et al. (2020). Multistable and dynamic CRISPRi-based synthetic circuits. Nature Communications, 11, 1–8.
Sato, K., et al. (2003). On the relation between fluctuation and response in biological systems. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100(24), 14086–14090.
Schaerli, Y., & Isalan, M. (2013). Building synthetic gene circuits from combinatorial libraries: Screening and selection strategies. Molecular BioSystems, 9(7), 1559–1567.
Schaerli, Y., et al. (2014). A unified design space of synthetic stripe-forming networks. Nature Communications, 5, 4905.
Schaerli, Y., et al. (2018). Synthetic circuits reveal how mechanisms of gene regulatory networks constrain evolution. Molecular Systems Biology, 14(9), e8102.
Shao, Y., et al. (2019). Creating a functional single-chromosome yeast. Nature, 560(7718), 331–335.
Simon, A. J., d’Oelsnitz, S., & Ellington, A. D. (2019). Synthetic evolution. Nature Biotechnology, 37(7), 730–743.
Smith, H. O., et al. (2003). Generating a synthetic genome by whole genome assembly: phiX174 bacteriophage from synthetic oligonucleotides. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100(26), 15440–15445.
Smith, J. M. (1992). Evolutionary biology - Byte-sized evolution. Nature, 355(6363), 772–773.
Sun, S. B., Schultz, P. G., & Kim, C. H. (2014). Therapeutic applications of an expanded genetic code. ChemBioChem, 15(12), 1721–1729.
Szymanski, E., & Calvert, J. (2018). Designing with living systems in the synthetic yeast project. Nature Communications, 9(1), 2950.
Tabor, J. J., et al. (2009). A synthetic genetic edge detection program. Cell, 137(7), 1272–1281.
Tang, T.-C., et al. (2020). Materials design by synthetic biology. Nature Reviews Materials, 1–19.
Terasaka, N., Azuma, Y., & Hilvert, D. (2018). Laboratory evolution of virus-like nucleocapsids from nonviral protein cages. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 115(21), 5432–5437.
Thao, T., et al. (2020). Rapid reconstruction of SARS-CoV-2 using a synthetic genomics platform. Nature, 582, 561–565.
Tumpey, T. M., et al. (2005). Characterization of the reconstructed 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic virus. Science, 310(5745), 77–80.
van Nies, P., et al. (2018). Self-replication of DNA by its encoded proteins in liposome-based synthetic cells. Nature Communications, 9(1), 1583.
Vogele, K., et al. (2018). Towards synthetic cells using peptide-based reaction compartments. Nature Communications, 9(1), 3862.
Wang, H., La Russa, M., & Qi, L. S. (2016). CRISPR/Cas9 in genome editing and beyond. Annual Review of Biochemistry, 85, 227–264.
Wang, H. H., et al. (2009). Programming cells by multiplex genome engineering and accelerated evolution. Nature, 460(7257), 894–898.
Wang, K., Schmied, W. H., & Chin, J. W. (2012). Reprogramming the genetic code: From triplet to quadruplet codes. Angewandte Chemie International Edition in English, 51(10), 2288–2297.
Wang, L., et al. (2001). Expanding the genetic code of Escherichia coli. Science, 292, 498–500.
Wang, Y.-H., Wei, K. Y., & Smolke, C. D. (2013). Synthetic biology: Advancing the design of diverse genetic systems. Annual Review of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, 4(1), 69–102.
Wannier, T. M., et al. (2018). Adaptive evolution of genomically recoded Escherichia coli. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 115(12), 3090–3095.
Wannier, T. M., et al. (2020). Improved bacterial recombineering by parallelized protein discovery. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 117(24), 13689–13698.
Weber, W., & Fussenegger, M. (2011). Emerging biomedical applications of synthetic biology. Nature Reviews Genetics, 13(1), 21–35.
Wightman, E. L. I., et al. (2020). Rapid optimisation of cellulolytic enzymes ratios in Saccharomyces cerevisiae using in vitro SCRaMbLE. Biotechnology for Biofuels, 13, 1–10.
Wimmer, E., & Paul, A. V. (2011). Synthetic poliovirus and other designer viruses: What have we learned from them? Annual Review of Microbiology, 65(1), 583–609.
Wolpert, L. (1969). Positional information and the spatial pattern of cellular differentiation. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 25(1), 1–47.
Wong, B. G., et al. (2018). Precise, automated control of conditions for high-throughput growth of yeast and bacteria with eVOLVER. Nature Biotechnology, 36(7), 614–623.
Wu, Y., et al. (2018). In vitro DNA SCRaMbLE. Nature Communications, 9(1), 1935.
Xie, M., & Fussenegger, M. (2018). Designing cell function: Assembly of synthetic gene circuits for cell biology applications. Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, 19, 507–525.
Yokobayashi, Y., Weiss, R., & Arnold, F. H. (2002). Directed evolution of a genetic circuit. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99(26), 16587–16591.
Zeymer, C., & Hilvert, D. (2018). Directed evolution of protein catalysts. Annual Review of Biochemistry, 87, 131–157.
Zhang, W., Mitchell, L. A., Bader, J. S., & Boeke, J. D. (2020). Synthetic genomes. Annual Review of Biochemistry, 89(1), 77–101.
Zhang, W. H., Otting, G., & Jackson, C. J. (2013). Protein engineering with unnatural amino acids. Current Opinion in Structural Biology, 23(4), 581–587.
Zhang, Y., & Romesberg, F. E. (2018). Semisynthetic organisms with expanded genetic codes. Biochemistry, 57(15), 2177–2178.
Zhang, Y., et al. (2017a). A semisynthetic organism engineered for the stable expansion of the genetic alphabet. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 114(6), 1317–1322.
Zhang, Y., et al. (2017b). A semi-synthetic organism that stores and retrieves increased genetic information. Nature, 551(7682), 644–647.
Acknowledgments
We thank Sara Mitri, Nienke Jager, and members of the Schaerli group for critical reading and valuable feedback. We acknowledge support by the Swiss National Science Foundation grant 31003A_175608.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Baier, F., Schaerli, Y. (2021). Addressing Evolutionary Questions with Synthetic Biology. In: Crombach, A. (eds) Evolutionary Systems Biology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71737-7_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71737-7_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-71736-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-71737-7
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)