Design, building, and challenges in synthetic genomics

To a large extent, synthetic biology became possible due to the advances in our understanding of genomes and the evolution of technologies that have enabled the assembly of large DNA molecules and the creation of artificial genomes. These technologies have ushered in a new era of synthetic genomics. The application of these technical advances combined with an understanding of genes and genome structure has made it possible to create artificial genomes. Artificial genomes are based on the overarching principle of creating programmable self-sustainable genomes that confer novel biological properties to the recipient genomes and cells. The process of minimization, design, and building of artificial genomes is complex and iterative. It requires substantial tweaking of genes and chromosomes, regulatory elements, and machinery and has led to rich insights into the design principles of genome organization that will be discussed in this chapter.