Coli counter

From FreeBio

Overview

In the coli counter project we try and build standard parts from phage proteins. The parts themselves are reminiscent of flip-flop memory elements in digital logic. Eventually we hope that our E. coli strains will use the standard parts to store a count of two alternating chemical stimuli in their DNA.

Counting up to one with DNA

ALife Boston talk by Nathan Walsh

NECSI, 24 Mt. Auburn St., Cambridge, 2pm, Monday, November 22nd.

Our goal is to use existing proteins as building blocks to allow bacteria to keep track (in a discrete sense) of the number of times a stimulus is seen. We are using the phage integration system to record events in the DNA, and allow the bacteria to respond after a desired number of events. This is part of a larger BioBricks project whose goal is to catalogue as many components as possible that would be beneficial to engineering projects like this one. I will be talking about our entire sub-project from design considerations, ODE and stochastic models to the experimental implementation.

References

• Biswas T, Aihara, H, Radman-Livaja M, Filman D, Landy A, Ellenberger T. A structural basis for allosteric control of DNA recombination by λ integrase. Image:Biswas05.pdf