Post-transcriptional regulation allows a faster control of gene expression, which might result relevant in the design of synthetic gene circuits. However, synthetic biologists are warned to give the proper consideration to functional modularity of biological parts and the need for a case-to-case characterization of their function, raising concern about the use of a overconfident bottom-up approach in synthetic biology and supporting the idea that emerging properties are a rule in nature that we must consider in the application of engineering principles to biology.
Ref.
Ceroni F. et al. A synthetic post-transcriptional controller to explore the modular design of gene circuits. ACS Synthetic Biology ISSN 2161-5063 (2012) 1(5):163-171. DOI: 10.1021/sb200021s
