Figure 1.

Schematic representation of possible connections between the categories of synthetic biology. Computer design established by the in silico approach influences all the other synthetic-biology approaches. Minimal chassis organisms synthesized by synthetic genomics could be useful for bioengineering. Synthetic genomes could be introduced into protocells and the synthetic genomics approach could be used for the synthesis of unnatural genome fragments, which could again be used in the protocell approach. Unnatural molecular biology could also be used in bioengineering independently of protocells. Metabolic pathways engineered by the bioengineering approach could be applied in protocells, and the pathways found to be required for bioengineering affect the models of the in silico approach.