BioBrick Assembly Standards and Techniques and Associated Software Tools

The BioBrick idea was developed to introduce the engineering principles of abstraction and standardization into synthetic biology. BioBricks are DNA sequences that serve a defined biological function and can be readily assembled with any other BioBrick parts to create new BioBricks with novel properties. In order to achieve this, several assembly standards can be used. Which assembly standards a BioBrick is compatible with, depends on the prefix and suffix sequences surrounding the part. In this chapter, five of the most common assembly standards will be described, as well as some of the most used assembly techniques, cloning procedures, and a presentation of the available software tools that can be used for deciding on the best method for assembling of different BioBricks, and searching for BioBrick parts in the Registry of Standard Biological Parts database.