SynBioFromLeukipposInstitute

Question to all Entrepreneurs: 

http://bit.ly/1gWLBtp

by
Arthur Prindle, Jangir Selimkhanov, Howard Li, Ivan Razinkov, Lev S. Tsimring & Jeff Hasty

"One promise of synthetic biology is the creation of genetic circuitry that enables the execution of logical programming in living cells. Such ‘wet programming’ is positioned to transform a wide and diverse swathe of biotechnology ranging from therapeutics and diagnostics to water treatment strategies. Although progress in the development of a library of genetic modules continues apace1, 2, 3, 4, a major challenge for their integration into larger circuits is the generation of sufficiently fast and precise communication between modules5, 6. An attractive approach is to integrate engineered circuits with host processes that facilitate robust cellular signalling7. In this context, recent studies have demonstrated that bacterial protein degradation can trigger a precise response to stress by overloading a limited supply of intracellular proteases8, 9, 10. Here we use protease competition to engineer rapid and tunable coupling of genetic circuits across multiple spatial and temporal scales. We characterize coupling delay times that are more than an order of magnitude faster than standard transcription-factor-based coupling methods (less than 1 min compared with ~20–40 min) and demonstrate tunability through manipulation of the linker between the protein and its degradation tag. We use this mechanism as a platform to couple genetic clocks at the intracellular and colony level, then synchronize the multi-colony dynamics to reduce variability in both clocks. We show how the coupled clock network can be used to encode independent environmental inputs into a single time series output, thus enabling frequency multiplexing (information transmitted on a common channel by distinct frequencies) in a genetic circuit context. Our results establish a general framework for the rapid and tunable coupling of genetic circuits through the use of native ‘queueing’ processes such as competitive protein degradation."

 http://bit.ly/1hGY7NV

by
Yue Zhang

"Many pioneering works have inspired researchers to stay up-todate on synthetic and system biology. Several cases that were originally thought to be exceptionally difficult, if not impossible, have been carried out successfully, such as Craig Venter’s creation of the world’s first synthetic life form. At a system level, nucleic reprogramming succeeded in frog half a century ago (reviewed in [1]); but doubts about whether or not this was impossible lingered until 40 years later, when a cocktail of four transcriptional factors systematically reprogrammed the somatic cells to stem cells [1-3]. Other cases include that telomerase reactivation may lead to the reversal of tissue degeneration in aged telomerase-deficient mice [4] and muscle-derived stem/progenitor cell dysfunction acts as a healthspan and lifespan limiting factor for murine progeria reversal [5].

http://bit.ly/1n9gwbm

*Academica is broken*

by

 MarkHahnel

"There are very few, if any discoveries each year in academia that come about without building on the concepts and ideas that have been previously published in academic journals. This is the natural progression of research. However, this is often limited to building on top of conclusions or ideas, as opposed to conducting the actual research itself. Current dissemination of research is largely based on making .pdf-based summaries of key findings available, while the actual research outputs and raw data behind the graphs are largely unavailable. This isn’t due to a lack of demand to by researchers to get credit for all of their hard work, it’s because the publication and subsequent reward structure in academia does not support this.

 http://bit.ly/1gLNpW4