Highlights•Environmentally responsive survival circuitry enable synthetic cell containment.•
Increased genetic stability by engineering sequence and host context.•Control circuits for …

Augmenting cells with novel, genetically encoded functions will support therapies that
expand beyond natural capacity for immune surveillance and tissue regeneration. However …

Broad-host-range synthetic biology is an emerging frontier that aims to expand our current
engineerable domain of microbial hosts for biodesign applications. As more novel species …

The ability to express transgenes at specified levels is critical for understanding cellular
behaviors, and for applications in gene and cell therapy. Transfection, viral vectors, and …

When host cells are in low abundance, temperate bacteriophages opt for dormant
(lysogenic) infection. Phage lambda implements this strategy by increasing the frequency of …

A central challenge in the quest for precise gene regulation within mammalian cells is the
development of regulatory networks that can achieve perfect adaptation—where outputs …

To realize the potential of engineered cells in therapeutic applications, transgenes must be
expressed within the window of therapeutic efficacy. Differences in copy number and other …

The development of synthetic biology has enabled massive progress in biotechnology and
in approaching research questions from a brand-new perspective. In particular, the design …

Cells reside in a dynamic microenvironment that presents them with regulatory signals that
vary in time, space, and amplitude. The cell, in turn, interprets these signals and accordingly …

Protein design plays an important role in recent medical advances from antibody therapy to
vaccine design. Typically, exhaustive mutational screens or directed evolution experiments …