Abstract
Cell-free synthetic biology is a maturing field that aims to assemble biomolecular reactions outside cells for compelling applications in drug discovery, metabolic engineering, biomanufacturing, diagnostics, and education. Cell-free systems have several key features. They circumvent mechanisms that have evolved to facilitate species survival, bypass limitations on molecular transport across the cell wall, enable high-yielding and rapid synthesis of proteins without creating recombinant cells, and provide high tolerance towards toxic substrates or products. Here, we analyze ~750 published patents and ~2000 peer-reviewed manuscripts in the field of cell-free systems. Three hallmarks emerged. First, we found that both patent filings and manuscript publications per year are significantly increasing (five-fold and 1.5-fold over the last decade, respectively). Second, we observed that the innovation landscape has changed. Patent applications were dominated by Japan in the early 2000s before shifting to China and the USA in recent years. Finally, we discovered an increasing prevalence of biotechnology companies using cell-free systems. Our analysis has broad implications on the future development of cell-free synthetic biology for commercial and industrial applications.
Original language | English (US) |
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Article number | 551 |
Journal | Life |
Volume | 11 |
Issue number | 6 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jun 2021 |
Funding
Funding: M.C.J. gratefully acknowledges support from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency Grants HDTRA1-15-10052/P00001 and HDTRA-12-01-0004, the National Institutes of Health Grant 1U19AI142780-01, the Army Research Office Grants W911NF2010195, W911NF-18-1-0200, and W911NF-16-1-0372, the Department of Energy Grant DE-SC0018249, the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Grant DE-EE0008343, the National Science Foundation Grants 1936789 and 1844336, the Air Force Research Laboratory Center of Excellence Grant FA8650-15-2-5518, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Grant OPP1217652, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Program. C.T. acknowledges the support from NIH (5R21EB025938). C.M. acknowledges the support from ARCS and National Science Foundation Grant 1806366.
Keywords
- Cell-free protein synthesis
- Industry
- Patent
- Synthetic biology
- TX-TL
- Transcription and translation
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
- General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
- Space and Planetary Science
- Palaeontology