RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Engineering cell population behavior
JF Science Signaling
JO Sci. Signal.
FD American Association for the Advancement of Science
SP ec250
OP ec250
DO 10.1126/scisignal.aad3211
VO 8
IS 392
A1 Ray, L. Bryan
YR 2015
UL http://stke.sciencemag.org/content/8/392/ec250.abstract
AB Attaining the full promise of synthetic biology will require designing population-level behaviors of multiple interacting cell types. As a start, Chen et al. engineered two strains of the bacterium Escherichia coli to produce signaling molecules that regulate transcription in the complementary strain (see the Perspective by Teague and Weiss). The signaling circuit was successfully designed to produce feedback loops that produce synchronous oscillations in transcription between the two strains. A mathematical model helped determine how to modulate the oscillations and control their robustness to perturbations.Y. Chen, J. K. Kim, A. J. Hirning, K. Josić, M. R. Bennett, Emergent genetic oscillations in a synthetic microbial consortium. Science 349, 986–989 (2015). [Abstract] [Full Text] B. P. Teague, R. Weiss, Synthetic communities, the sum of parts. Science 349, 924–925 (2015). [Summary] [Full Text]