Preface for special issue on bioengineering and human health (2019) / 生物工程学报

Human health is the foundation of human survival and development. It is an important objective of sustainable development to enhance human health level. With the development of science and technology, bioengineering, as an interdisciplinary biological technology, is becoming the key driver of these goals. This special issue reviewed and discussed the recent progress and future perspectives of bioengineering technologies in the biomedical applications from the aspects of engineering design, disease diagnosis, gene- and cell-based therapies. We hope this special issue could provide valuable references for promoting bioengineering technologies used for the healthcare applications.

Development and application of optogenetic tools / 生物工程学报

Dynamic variations of the cell microenvironment can affect cell differentiation, cell signaling pathways, individual growth, and disease. Optogenetics combines gene-encoded protein expression with optical controlling, and offers a novel, reversible, non-invasive and spatiotemporal-specific research tool to dynamically or reversibly regulate cell signaling pathways, subcellular localization and gene expression. This review summarizes the types of optogenetic components and the involved cellular signaling pathways, and explores the application and future prospects of the light-controlled cell signaling pathways.

Research progress of mammalian synthetic biology in biomedical field / 生物工程学报

Although still in its infant stage, synthetic biology has achieved remarkable development and progress during the past decade. Synthetic biology applies engineering principles to design and construct gene circuits uploaded into living cells or organisms to perform novel or improved functions, and it has been widely used in many fields. In this review, we describe the recent advances of mammalian synthetic biology for the treatment of diseases. We introduce common tools and design principles of synthetic gene circuits, and then we demonstrate open-loop gene circuits induced by different trigger molecules used in disease diagnosis and close-loop gene circuits used for biomedical applications. Finally, we discuss the perspectives and potential challenges of synthetic biology for clinical applications.