J.X, A.F.S., T.B.S., S.L.S.) provided support for the authors of this manuscript. S.L.S is an investigator of the Howard

Hughes Medical Institute. “
“With regard to the article “Congenital cardiovascular malformations: Noninvasive imaging by MRI Thiazovivin order in neonates,” by Rajesh Krishnamurthy and Edward Lee, which appeared in Magnetic Resonance Imaging Clinics of North America, Nov 2011 19(4):813–22 (doi: 10.1016/j.mric.2011.08.002), the publisher would like to clarify that Dr Lee’s full name is Edward Y. Lee. “
“Current Opinion in Chemical Biology 2012, 16:586–592 This review comes from a themed issue on Aesthetics Edited by Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg For a complete overview see the Issue and the Editorial Available online 6th November 2012 1367-5931/$ – see front matter, © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cbpa.2012.10.020 The term synthetic biology was intended simply to denote

the assembly of biological parts into larger systems, just as synthetic chemists build larger molecules from smaller molecules [1]. From this perspective, synthetic biology has grown into a wide spectrum of research programs http://www.selleckchem.com/products/dabrafenib-gsk2118436.html (Figure 1) incorporating elements from engineering, biology, chemistry, physics, design, and art. The predominant way in which synthetic biology is practiced is to engineer subsystems within the larger framework of a cell that was not engineered. Individual, mostly natural, biological parts are thoroughly characterized, that is standardized, so that predictable (sub)systems consisting of these parts can be built. Just as the same set of Lego pieces can be used to build many different structures, standardized biological parts can be put together in many ways giving organisms that Phospholipase D1 manufacture fuel, produce pharmaceuticals, or detect environmental pollutants. The exercise of building biological behavior, in turn, contributes to our understanding of how natural biological systems function. However, the construction of systems that operate within a host that

is dependent upon genes with unknown function, as is the case for all known life, leaves many gaps in our knowledge untouched. The engineering of life does not solely rely on the use of previously existing natural biological parts. Instead, new cellular pathways can be built with artificial components. Because of the difficulties associated with engineering proteins with new functionality, artificial RNA rather than protein molecules are more commonly exploited. For example, Gallivan and colleagues built a ligand responsive artificial RNA to engineer Escherichia coli to swim towards a pollutant molecule [ 2]. In this case, the artificial RNA was integrated with natural RNA and protein components to elicit the new behavior. Conversely, entire artificial systems can be made to exist within a natural host cell.