Synthetic biology, by engineering biological systems for specific functions, can have widespread applications. For example, microorganisms can be engineered to produce valuable chemicals that are difficult to synthesize, or cells engineered to detect and respond to levels of glucose concentration by secreting insulin. Moreover, building simple circuits with well-characterized molecular components can teach us a lot about biology. These minimal circuits provide us with a tractable context where we can control all of the components and their interactions (much like a biological electronic breadboard), in addition to generating useful perturbations to probe biological systems. Using approaches inspired by physics, these minimalistic models can give us deeper insights into biological systems. The lab research goals are to engineer reliable synthetic gene circuits suitable for impactful applications, and to use them as models and tools to learn more about biology.
