Synthetic biology is the design and construction of new biological parts, devices, and systems, and the re-design of existing, natural biological systems for useful purposes. Synthetic biology aims to build artificial decision-making circuits that are programmable, predictable and perform a specific function. Since the rise of synthetic biology in the 2000s, most synthetic circuits have been governed by protein-based regulators. Recently, however, there has been growing interest in circuits based on RNA regulators as a means to overcome some of the intrinsic limitations of protein regulators.
