ADVANCES IN CELL-FREE SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY PLATFORMS, ENGINEERING STRATEGIES, AND BIOLOGICAL APPLICATIONS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.65327/bp.v12i3.2532Keywords:
Cell-free synthetic biology, cell-free protein synthesis, synthetic biology platforms, biomanufacturing, biosensingAbstract
Cell-free synthetic biology has evolved into a widely applicable engineering tool for the reconstruction, manipulation and optimization of biological functions in vitro. This review examines the foundational principles, major platform architectures, engineering strategies, expanding applications, translational barriers, and emerging directions shaping the field. There are currently a number of cell-free systems available, all of which have different advantages for the synthesis of proteins, pathway engineering, biosensing, biomaterials, and biomanufacturing, including bacterial, yeast, mammalian, plant, insect, and reconstituted platforms. Their performance is increasingly enhanced through regulatory sequence design, metabolic rewiring, synthetic gene circuits, microfluidic integration, and high-throughput automation. All these advances have been extended to a wide range of therapeutics, peptide antibiotics, natural products, diagnostics, biomaterials, and agricultural and industrial biotechnology applications. While this is progress, there are still significant challenges in terms of reproducibility, scalability, longevity of the reaction, cost, biosafety, and regulatory standardization. Future development is expected to depend on deeper integration of predictive modeling, artificial intelligence, automated design–build–test–learn workflows, synthetic genomics, and lab-on-a-chip technologies. Platform standardization, interoperable workflows, and application-specific system engineering will be important elements to help bring cell-free systems from the lab to reliable, scalable, and deployable biotechnology platforms.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Dr. Kavita Yadav, Dr. Vijai Singh, Dr. Karthik Subramaniam Pushpavan, Dr. Gaurav Chauhan
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