Issues

This issue of Emerging Topics in Life Sciences brings together a collection of perspectives and reviews discussing the exciting advances in synthetic biology. The cover image is an adaptation of a figure featured in the review ‘Physicochemical considerations for bottom-up synthetic biology’ by Śmigiel et al. It shows an artist's impression of a bottom-up constructed synthetic cell, representing the three basic processes of a living cell: cell fuelling (green), DNA processing (orange/red), and cell division (blue).