The World Health Organization reported that "an estimated 12.6 million people died as a result of living or working in an unhealthy environment in 2012, nearly 1 in 4 of total global deaths". Air, water and soil pollution were the significant risk factors, and there is an urgent need for effective remediation strategies. But tackling this problem is not easy; there are many different types of pollutants, often widely dispersed, difficult to locate and identify, and in many cases cost-effective clean-up techniques are lacking. Biology offers enormous potential as a tool to develop microbial and plant-based solutions to remediate and restore our environment. Advances in synthetic biology are unlocking this potential enabling the design of tailor-made organisms for bioremediation. In this article, we showcase examples of xenobiotic clean-up to illustrate current achievements and discuss the limitations to advancing this promising technology to make real-world improvements in the remediation of global pollution.

中文翻译：

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合成生物学如何帮助生物修复。

世界卫生组织报告称，“2012 年，估计有 1260 万人因在不健康的环境中生活或工作而死亡，占全球死亡总数的近四分之一”。空气、水和土壤污染是重要的风险因素，迫切需要有效的修复策略。但是解决这个问题并不容易。有许多不同类型的污染物，通常分布广泛，难以定位和识别，而且在许多情况下缺乏具有成本效益的清理技术。生物学作为一种工具提供了巨大的潜力，可以开发基于微生物和植物的解决方案来修复和恢复我们的环境。合成生物学的进步正在释放这种潜力，从而能够设计出用于生物修复的定制生物体。在本文中，