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.