RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Development of prokaryotic cell-free systems for synthetic biology
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 048710
DO 10.1101/048710
A1 Abel C. Chiao
A1 Richard M. Murray
A1 Zachary Z Sun
YR 2016
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/04/15/048710.abstract
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.