Figure 1. Strategy used for integrated synthetic genetics.

(a) Construction of an artificial cell-like compartment. The artificial cell contains ribosomes, RNA polymerases, fluorescent reporters and a randomly distributed ORF library. (b) Fluorescent reporter. The reporter fluoresces only when the target biological subsystem's function is active. (c) Construction of a liposome library. Reconstructing the function of the target subsystem occurs in a subpopulation of the liposome library (shown in blue) that contains that set of genes required for the target biological subsystem, resulting in fluorescence. (d) Sorting fluorescent liposomes by FACS. (e) Identifying incorporated genes by multiplex next-generation sequencing. (f) Identifying common factors by hierarchical cluster analysis.