Ecology of a Simple Synthetic Biofilm

Nelson, Edward M.; Mirsaidov, Utkur; Sarveswaran, Koshala; Perry, Nicolás; Kurz, Volker; Timp, Winston; Timp, G.

doi:10.1007/978-1-4939-1402-9_11

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

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“…Arrays of any size and shape can be constructed this way. Moreover, as demonstrated elsewhere, even three-dimensional circuitry is possible by stacking voxels so that fan-out could be increased . Alternatively, the logic could be made to switch faster .…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Wiring Together Synthetic Bacterial Consortia to Create a Biological Integrated Circuit

2016

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The promise of adapting biology to information processing will not be realized until engineered gene circuits, operating in different cell populations, can be wired together to express a predictable function. Here, elementary biological integrated circuits (BICs), consisting of two sets of transmitter and receiver gene circuit modules with embedded memory placed in separate cell populations, were meticulously assembled using live cell lithography and wired together by the mass transport of quorum-sensing (QS) signal molecules to form two isolated communication links (comlinks). The comlink dynamics were tested by broadcasting "clock" pulses of inducers into the networks and measuring the responses of functionally linked fluorescent reporters, and then modeled through simulations that realistically captured the protein production and molecular transport. These results show that the comlinks were isolated and each mimicked aspects of the synchronous, sequential networks used in digital computing. The observations about the flow conditions, derived from numerical simulations, and the biofilm architectures that foster or silence cell-to-cell communications have implications for everything from decontamination of drinking water to bacterial virulence.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, as demonstrated elsewhere, even threedimensional circuitry is possible by stacking voxels so that fanout could be increased. 55 Alternatively, the logic could be made to switch faster. 56 Finally, embedded memory, and the bistability that drives it, could be used to mitigate signal attentuation.…”

Section: ■ Results and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%