Sensing the future of bio-informational engineering

The practices of synthetic biology are being integrated into ‘multiscale’ designs enabling two-way communication across organic and inorganic information substrates in biological, digital and cyber-physical system integrations. Novel applications of ‘bio-informational’ engineering will arise in envi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications 2021-01, Vol.12 (1), p.388-12, Article 388
Main Authors: Dixon, Thomas A., Williams, Thomas C., Pretorius, Isak S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/553/552
706/689/680
Agricultural engineering
Bioengineering - methods
Bioengineering - trends
Biology
Bioreactors
Biosensors
Cyber-physical systems
Engineering
Environmental monitoring
Forecasting
Humanities and Social Sciences
Land use
Medicinal plants
multidisciplinary
Perspective
Precision farming
Precision medicine
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Substrates
Synthetic biology
Synthetic Biology - methods
Synthetic Biology - trends
Taxonomy
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Summary:The practices of synthetic biology are being integrated into ‘multiscale’ designs enabling two-way communication across organic and inorganic information substrates in biological, digital and cyber-physical system integrations. Novel applications of ‘bio-informational’ engineering will arise in environmental monitoring, precision agriculture, precision medicine and next-generation biomanufacturing. Potential developments include sentinel plants for environmental monitoring and autonomous bioreactors that respond to biosensor signaling. As bio-informational understanding progresses, both natural and engineered biological systems will need to be reimagined as cyber-physical architectures. We propose that a multiple length scale taxonomy will assist in rationalizing and enabling this transformative development in engineering biology. Synthetic biology engineering principles enable two-way communication between living and inanimate substrates. Here the authors consider the development of this bio-informational exchange and propose cyber-physical architectures and applications.
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/s41467-020-20764-2