Seminar in Systems Biology - Elisa Franco Mar 18, at 16 hrs.

[Claudio Altafini]

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SEMINAR

Elisa Franco (Caltech)

Title: Flow regulation for synthetic genetic circuits

Wedn. 18 March 2009 at 16:00

SISSA - Main Building - ground floor - room A


Abstract:
Flow control is a fundamental feature for the correct performance of large 
scale networks, of which familiar examples are the Internet, power grids or 
even pipe networks. In the biological world, complex cellular pathways rely as 
heavily on a regulated flow of nucleic acids, transcription factors and other 
metabolites. It is therefore important to explore and understand all the 
possibilities for production and degradation rate control in biochemical 
components.
Two designs to regulate and match the RNA production of two in vitro synthetic 
genetic circuits (J. Kim 2006) will be considered. In particular, these 
architectures are based on self inhibition and cross activation mechanisms that 
can dynamically change the fraction of actively transcribing DNA strands and 
correctly respond to changes in the chemical environment.
The two regulatory architectures are numerically analyzed trough a first order 
model derived from the set of occurring reactions. Most importantly, 
experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed feedback loops in 
regulating the RNA out-flow of the circuits.


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Claudio Altafini
   SISSA-ISAS International School for Advanced Studies
   via Beirut 4, 34014 Trieste, Italy
   tel:   +39 040 3787 431;  mob.ph. +39 339 332 8056
   email: altafini at sissa.it
   web:   people.sissa.it/~altafini