中文摘要：

合成生物学是综合了科学与工程的一个崭新的生物学研究领域，为生命现象及其运动规律的解析提供了一种采用“白下而上”合成策略的正向工程学的研究思路和方法手段，在经济和社会发展中具有巨大的应用开发潜力。近年来，DNA合成与系统生物学技术的发展使生命系统复杂基因回路的设计、合成与组装逐步成为可能，并应用于生物基化学品、生物燃料、医药中间体、保健产品的生产和环境保护等领域。但是，合成生物学的研究仍然面临科学、技术和伦理的挑战，只有积极地应对这些问题，在加大研究开发支持力度的同时，做好必要的风险监管，才能真正把握合成生物学发展带来的历史机遇。

英文摘要：

Synthetic biology is an emerging field of biological research that combines science and engineering to study the mechanism of life and for a variety of technological applications. Research in synthetic biology has primarily focused on developing an engineering dogma for bottom-up design and synthesis of biological circuits from standardized parts and modules followed by optimizing their operation on well-characterized chassis, in vivo or in vitro. Recent progress in synthetic biology, such as significant improvements in efficient DNA/gene synthesis and ever increasing knowledge of biological systems via genomic and functional genomic analysis enables scientists to design and construct increasingly complex genetic devices and circuits, to synthesize and assembly bacterial genomes, and to develop artificially modified biological systems to produce renewable chemicals, biofuels, pharmaceutical intermediates, health care products and new tools for environment protection. However, neither the scientific complexity nor the technological uncertainty of the research has been thoroughly studied. In addition, the legal and ethical concerns of its social and humanitarian impact is largely yet to be addressed. Proper regulations should be developed to support the innovation and related application transformation while protecting the public from potential harms.