Recent progress in developing frameworks for the construction of RNA
devices is enabling rapid advances in cellular engineering applications.
These devices provide scalable platforms for the construction of molecular
communication and control systems for reporting on, responding to, and
controlling intracellular components in living systems. Research that has
demonstrated the modularity, portability, and specificity inherent in
these molecules for cellular control will be highlighted and its
implications for synthetic and systems biology research will be discussed.
The flexibility of the specified framework enables these molecules to be
integrated as systems that perform higher-level signal processing based on
molecular computation strategies. The application of these molecular
devices to address challenges in metabolic engineering will be discussed.
In particular, the application of these systems to non-invasive in vivo
monitoring of biomolecule levels and to dynamically regulating flux
through metabolic networks will be described.