Synthetic biology is the design and modification of biological systems for specific functions, integrating several disciplines like engineering, genetics, and computer science. The field of synthetic biology is to understand biological processes within host organisms through the manipulation and regulation of their genetic pathways and the addition of biocontrol circuits to enhance their production capabilities. This pursuit serves to address global challenges spanning diverse domains that are difficult to tackle through conventional routes of production. Despite its impact, achieving precise, dynamic, and high-throughput manipulation of biological processes is still challenging. Microfluidics offers a solution to those challenges, enabling controlled fluid handling at the microscale, offering lower reagent consumption, faster analysis of biochemical reactions, automation, and high throughput screening. In this review, we diverge from conventional focus on automating the synthetic biology design-build-test-learn cycle, and instead, focus on microfluidic platforms and their role in advancing synthetic biology through its integration with host organisms – bacterial cells, yeast, fungi, animal cells – and cell-free systems. The review illustrates how microfluidic devices have been instrumental in understanding biological systems by showcasing microfluidics as an essential tool to create synthetic genetic circuits, pathways, and organisms within controlled environments. In conclusion, we show how microfluidics expedite synthetic biology applications across diverse domains including but not limited to personalized medicine, bioenergy, and agriculture.

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微流体与合成生物学的整合：跨生物体的进步和多样化应用

合成生物学是针对特定功能的生物系统的设计和修改，整合了工程学、遗传学和计算机科学等多个学科。合成生物学领域是通过操纵和调节宿主生物体的遗传途径以及添加生物控制回路以增强其生产能力来了解宿主生物体内的生物过程。这一追求旨在解决跨越不同领域的全球挑战，而这些挑战是通过传统生产途径难以解决的。尽管有其影响，实现生物过程的精确、动态和高通量操纵仍然具有挑战性。微流体技术为这些挑战提供了解决方案，实现了微尺度的受控流体处理，提供更低的试剂消耗、更快的生化反应分析、自动化和高通量筛选。在这篇综述中，我们偏离了对合成生物学设计-构建-测试-学习周期自动化的传统关注，而是重点关注微流控平台及其通过与宿主生物体（细菌细胞、酵母、真菌）的整合在推进合成生物学方面的作用、动物细胞和无细胞系统。该评论通过展示微流体作为在受控环境中创建合成遗传电路、途径和生物体的重要工具，说明了微流体装置如何有助于理解生物系统。总之，我们展示了微流体如何加速合成生物学在不同领域的应用，包括但不限于个性​​化医疗、生物能源和农业。