新基因起源：从自然进化到人工设计

生命体系历经40多亿年的自然进化,创造了无数丰富多彩的功能基因,保障了生命体系的传承与繁荣。然而生命体系的自然进化历程极其缓慢,新的功能基因产生需要数百万年时间,无法满足快速发展的工业生产需求。利用合成生物学技术,研究人员可以依据已知的酶催化机理和蛋白质结构进行全新的基因设计与合成,按照工业生产需求快速创造全新的蛋白质催化剂,实现各种自然界生物无法催化的生物化学反应。尽管新基因设计技术展现了激动人心的应用前景,但是目前该技术还存在设计成功率不高、酶催化活性较低、合成成本较高等科技挑战。未来随着合成生物学技术的快速发展,设计、改造、合成和筛选等技术将融合为一体,为新基因设计与创建带来全新的发展机遇。

Origin of new genes: from evolution to design

Life system has created rich and colorful genes, to protect the inheritance and prosperity after more than 40 billion years of natural evolution. However, the natural evolution is an extremely slow process, and the origin and evolution of new gene with new function often takes millions of years. Therefore, natural evolution alone cannot meet the rapid development of industrial biotechnological production needs. Using synthetic biology techniques, researchers can design and synthesize new genes based on the known enzyme catalysis mechanism and protein structure according to industrial production requirements, and create various biochemical reactions that cannot be catalyzed by natural living organisms. Although the new gene design technology shows exciting application prospects, there are now still many scientific and technological challenges, such as low success rate of design, low catalytic activity and high synthesis cost. With the rapid development of synthetic biology, the design, transformation, synthesis, screening and other technologies will be integrated into a mature technological process for the new gene design.