Microfluidic approaches for synthetic gene circuits’ construction and analysis

Abstract

Background: Microfluidic systems have advantages such as a high throughput, small reaction volume, and precise control of the cellular position and environment. These advantages have allowed microfluidics to be widely used in several fields of synthetic biology in recent years.

Results: In this article, we reviewed the microfluidic-based methods for synthetic biology from two aspects: the construction of synthetic gene circuits and the analysis of synthetic gene systems. We used some examples to illuminate the progresses and challenges in the steps of synthetic gene circuits construction and approaches of gene expression analysis with microfluidic systems.

Conclusion: Comparing to traditional methods, microfluidic tools promise great advantages in the synthetic genetic circuit building and analysis process. Moreover, new microfluidic systems together with the mathematical modeling of synthetic circuits or consortiums are desirable to perform complex genetic circuit construction and understand the natural gene regulation in cells and population interactions better.

Author summary

Microfluidics-based methods for synthetic biology include the construction of synthetic gene circuits and the analysis of synthetic gene systems. In the former, the high-throughput, automated control of reaction media and the mini reaction systems of microfluidic systems for gene circuit synthesis can substantially improve efficiency, which leads to a significant cost reduction. In the latter, the precise control of cellular growth directions and environments combined with time-lapse microscopy makes the description of cell behavior or gene expression easier and more accurate. Accordingly, there is a great opportunity for microfluidics to be applied in synthetic biology research in the future.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

microfluidics / synthetic gene circuit / analysis

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This study was supported the National Key Research and Development Project (2018YFA0900700 and 2020YFA0906900) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos.11974002, 11674010).

COMPLIANCE WITH ETHICS GUIDELINES

The authors Fengyu Zhang, Yanhong Sun, and Chunxiong Luo declare that they have no conflict of interests.

This article is a review article and does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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