Designing artificial synthetic promoters for accurate, smart, and versatile gene expression in plants

With the development of high-throughput biology techniques and artificial intelligence, it has become increasingly feasible to design and construct artificial biological parts, modules, circuits, and even whole systems. To overcome the limitations of native promoters in controlling gene expression, artificial promoter design aims to synthesize short, inducible, and conditionally controlled promoters to coordinate the expression of multiple genes in diverse plant metabolic and signaling pathways. Synthetic promoters are versatile and can drive gene expression accurately with smart responses; they show potential for enhancing desirable traits in crops, thereby improving crop yield, nutritional quality, and food security. This review first illustrates the importance of synthetic promoters, then introduces promoter architecture and thoroughly summarizes advances in synthetic promoter construction. Restrictions to the development of synthetic promoters and future applications of such promoters in synthetic plant biology and crop improvement are also discussed.