biology Review Saccharomyces cerevisiae Promoter Engineering before and during the Synthetic Biology Era Xiaofan Feng and Mario Andrea Marchisio * School of Pharmaceutical Science and Technology, Tianjin University, 92 Weijin Road, Tianjin 300072, China;
[email protected] * Correspondence:
[email protected] or
[email protected] Simple Summary: Promoters are DNA sequences where the process of transcription starts. They can work constitutively or be controlled by environmental signals of different types. The quantity of proteins and RNA present in yeast genetic circuits highly depends on promoter strength. Hence, they have been deeply studied and modified over, at least, the last forty years, especially since the year 2000 when Synthetic Biology was born. Here, we present how promoter engineering changed over these four decades and discuss its possible future directions due to novel computational methods and technology. Abstract: Synthetic gene circuits are made of DNA sequences, referred to as transcription units, that communicate by exchanging proteins or RNA molecules. Proteins are, mostly, transcription factors that bind promoter sequences to modulate the expression of other molecules. Promoters are, therefore, key components in genetic circuits. In this review, we focus our attention on the construction of artificial promoters for the yeast S. cerevisiae, a popular chassis for gene circuits. We describe the initial techniques and achievements in promoter engineering that predated the start of the Synthetic Biology epoch of about 20 years. We present the main applications of synthetic Citation: Feng, X.; Marchisio, M.A. promoters built via different methods and discuss the latest innovations in the wet-lab engineering Saccharomyces cerevisiae Promoter of novel promoter sequences.