What are the major applications and advances in synthetic biology?

Synthetic Biology provides innovative approaches for engineering new biological systems or re-designing existing ones for multiple purpose. For instance, biologists can now produce small molecules in a short time using synthetic biology approaches, which can address shortages of key compounds quickly. Moreover, synthetic biology is driving significant advances in biomedicine, which will lead to transformational improvements in healthcare. Already, patients are benefiting from so-called CAR (for chimeric antigen receptor) technology, which engineers the immune cells (T-cells) of the patient to recognize and attack cancer cells.

References:

Casini, A., Chang, F. Y., Eluere, R., King, A. M., Young, E. M., Dudley, Q. M., et al. (2018). A pressure test to make 10 molecules in 90 days: external evaluation of methods to engineer biology. J Am Chem Soc. 140, 4302–4316. doi: 10.1021/jacs.7b13292

June, C. H., O'Connor, R. S., Kawalekar, O. U., Ghassemi, S., Milone, M. C., et al. (2018). CAR T cell immunotherapy for human cancer. Science 359, 1361–1365 doi: 10.1126/science.aar6711