Selected Case Studies

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Selected Case Studies
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MIT 2006 Engineering bacteria to smell good
C. breweri
S. cerevisiae
ATF1 banana
BSMT wintergreen
Slides borrowed from the 2006 MIT Team
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Engineering the scent of bacteria
What is the desired output?
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Components of engineered cell
What is needed to create the desired output?
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Components of engineered cell
What is needed to create the desired output?
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Creating devices with BioBricks
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Components of scent-producing devices
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Components of scent-producing devices
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Components of upstream devices
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How do you regulate when the scents are expressed?
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Goal Sense the growth state of culture
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Regulating the timing of expression

• osmY active in stationary phase under high
  osmotic pressure conditions

osmY
osmY inverter
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Regulating the timing of expression
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Design principles

• What is the desired output? What is needed to
  create this output?
• What do you want to sense?
• Use of constitutive promoters, inducible
  promoters, and inverters

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Berkeley 2006Bacterial Networks
Need To transfer DNA messages from one bacterial
cell to another Means Bacterial
Conjugation Need To specifically control who
can read the DNA message Means Riboregulation
Some slides borrowed from the 2006 Berkeley Team
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Ribosome Binding Site
Protein Coding Part
Regulatory Part/ Promoter
Terminator
Protein
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DNA to RNA to Protein
DNA
Ribosome Binding Site
RNA
Ribosome Binding Site
Protein
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Protein synthesis from RNA
Ribosome
RNA
Ribosome Binding Site
Protein
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Locked structure prevents ribosome binding
RNA
Ribosome Binding Site
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RNA Key unlocks lock
Ribosome
RNA
Ribosome Binding Site
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Goal Create network of cell-cell communication
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RNA as a regulatory mechanism

• Can activate some riboswitches with small
  molecules
• Advantage fast response - transcript is already
  made
• Alternative method block translation by adding
  antisense RNA to RBD