Why synthetic Biology Reverse Engineering vs Forward engineering

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 (Ste 5 and Pbs 2) to avoid crosstalk through the shared component Ste 11. By constructing a modified fusion protein of Pbs 2 and Ste 5, 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 micro. RNA 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?