PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Abel C. Chiao
AU  - Richard M. Murray
AU  - Zachary Z Sun
TI  - Development of prokaryotic cell-free systems for synthetic biology
AID  - 10.1101/048710
DP  - 2016 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 048710
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/04/15/048710.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/04/15/048710.full
AB  - Prokaryotic cell-free systems are currently heavily used for the production of protein that can be otherwise challenging to produce in cells. However, historically cell-free systems were used to explore natural phenomena before the advent of genetic modification and transformation technology. Recently, synthetic biology has seen a resurgence of this historical use of cell-free systems as a prototyping tool of synthetic and natural genetic circuits. For these cell-free systems to be effective prototyping tools, an understanding of cell-free system mechanics must be established that is not purely protein-expression driven. Here we discuss the development of E. coli-based cell-free systems, with an emphasis on documenting published extract and energy preparation methods into a uniform format. We also discuss additional considerations when applying cell-free systems to synthetic biology.