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Why synthetic Biology?. Reverse Engineering vs. Forward engineering: Synthetic replicas of natural genetic circuits. 1) Why synthetic Biology?. Reverse Engineering vs. Forward engineering: Synthetic replicas of natural genetic circuits Test sufficiency of design of producing behavior
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Why synthetic Biology? • Reverse Engineering vs. Forward engineering: • Synthetic replicas of natural genetic circuits
1) Why synthetic Biology? • Reverse Engineering vs. Forward engineering: • Synthetic replicas of natural genetic circuits • Test sufficiency of design of producing behavior • Done without impairing cellular circuits • Compare different circuit designs that accomplish same function • Applications • Nanoscale materials • Cost effective production of anti malaria drugs
Lessons learned • Noise • Computation by simple circuits • ????
Rewiring signalling pathways. The pheromone and osmolarity response pathways in yeast use protein scaffolds (Ste5 and Pbs2) to avoid crosstalk through the shared component Ste11. By constructing a modified fusion protein of Pbs2 and Ste5, the authors constructed a rewired pathway in which cells produce osmolarity stress responses after pheromone induction
2)Conditions for a Successful Synthetic Biology • Well characterized components • Modular (analogy to engineering) • Orthogonal to cellular processes • Robust circuit designs • Streamlined process • Standardization • Decoupling
3) Previous work: focused on transcriptional circuits • Principles of noise suppression • Bistability • Oscillations • The benefits of feedback • Effect of delays
Other mechanisms to design with… • Protein Modifications • Regulated Degradation • microRNA • Diffusible molecules • ????
4) Who do you think is suited to work in synthetic biology? • Biologists? Why? • Chemists? Why? • Engineers? Why?
5) What is the difference between engineered technological systems and biological systems? Evolution!!!
Risks of building synthetic circuits? • Thoughts?