Synthetic biology aims to engineer genetically modified biological systems that perform novel functions that do not exist in nature, with reusable, standard interchangeable biological parts. The use of these standard biological parts enables the exploitation of common engineering principles such as standardization, decoupling, and abstraction for synthetic biology. With this engineering framework in place, synthetic biology has the potential to make the construction of novel biological systems a predictable, reliable, systematic process. While the development of most synthetic biological systems remains largely ad hoc, recent efforts to implement an engineering framework in synthetic biology have provided long-awaited evidences that engineering principles can facilitate the construction of novel biological systems. Synthetic biology has so far demonstrated that its framework can be applied to a wide range of areas such as energy, environment, and health care. In this talk, our recent efforts to develop synthetic microbes with programmable behaviors will be presented. In particular, an emphasis will be placed on our recent development of auto-regulatory genetic circuits for microbial chemical production and therapeutic applications. http://synbiolab.org/