Team:IIT Delhi/Abstract
Abstract
Remember ’Mystique’ from the X-men franchise? Albeit prone to a little villainy, she is that amazing character with the blue skin; and possessed the uncanny ability to effortlessly transform into anyone at will. Quite an intriguing capability; her cells had the potency to reconfigure into any individual of choice as per necessity. Now, that may be a far fetched dream, but we can take a lesson or two from Mystique’s biological gifts. For instance, reconfigurable electronic circuits may not be far out of reach [? ];these systems would be the ideal multitaskers, switching between functionalities as the need arises. Synthetic Biology also seems to be vying for a place in this domain; from reconfigurable logic gate systems [2, 4] to systems with switchable dynamical behavior [1, 2, 6]. On an abstract level, the idea of reconfigurablity resonates with Team iGem IIT Delhi. Works like [1, 6] that propose a novel synthetic circuit, which can act both as an oscillator and a toggle switch have been a major influence on our work. The projet is divided into two parts; and at the heart of it all lies a ”Sychnronized Quorum of Genetic Clocks” [3]. First, we develop a reconfigurable circuit that can switch between an oscillator and a toggle switch. We realize this circuit using the oscillator of [3]. In order to achieve a toggle switch behavior, we add the lambda repressor; which is susceptible to thermal denaturation. Thus, at temperatures of around 30 deg. celsius the system acts as a toggle switch, since the lambda repressor is constitutively produced and represses AiiA. However, as the temperature is raised to 37 deg. celsius, the lambda repressor undergoes thermal denaturation and thus the system starts acting an oscillator. The second part ofour project focuses on modifying the oscillator in [3] such that we are able to tune the frequency response. The frequency tuning is under the control of light. Addition of an optogenetic component to the system affords us control over the frequency by simpling shining light on the system; thus, we call the second system ”Highly Optogenetically Tuned Frequency Modulator” or as we like to call it, HOT-FM. We desgined the purported optogenetic system using the Ccas- Ccar system. Simulations support the hypothesis for frequency modulation. The Biological realization for this part of our project is still under work. Throughout the wiki, we explain the different stages of implementation for the two systems. We begin with a very brief review of the work done of oscillators, followed by a detailed description of the synchronized oscillators of [3]. An increasingly crucial component of synthetic circuit design is the use of computational resources. In this regard, first we replicate the results of [3]; and we build on this computational model to study the effects of our proposed modifiations. Simulations support our hypotheses regarding the two systems that we have proposed.
