Origin of new genes: from evolution to design / 生物工程学报

ABSTRACT

Life system has created rich and colorful genes, to protect the inheritance and prosperity after more than 4 billion years of natural evolution. However, the natural evolution is an extremely slow process, and the origin and evolution of new gene with new function often takes millions of years. Therefore, natural evolution alone cannot meet the rapid development of industrial biotechnological production needs. Using synthetic biology techniques, researchers can design and synthesize new genes based on the known enzyme catalysis mechanism and protein structure according to industrial production requirements, and create various biochemical reactions that cannot be catalyzed by natural living organisms. Although the new gene design technology shows exciting application prospects, there are now still many scientific and technological challenges, such as low success rate of design, low catalytic activity and high synthesis cost. With the rapid development of synthetic biology, the design, transformation, synthesis, screening and other technologies will be integrated into a mature technological process for the new gene design.