Advanced molecular measurements for fundamental research on rules of composition in synthetic biology
Abstract
Synthetic biology aims to program biology for applications, such as biosensing, smart probiotics, and regenerative medicine. A major challenge to engineering synthetic biological circuits is that when circuits are composed together they no longer behave as intended. This forces a designer to re-optimize each component once other modules are added to a system. Today, circuits are still designed in a monolithic fashion through brute-force parameter search, a lengthy process that is not scalable, nor generalizable, and often leads to poor outcomes. This issue of compositional context is hampering progress in the field and hence also jeopardizing the potential impact of synthetic biology. Overcoming these challenges requires a rigorous, modular, and systematic design framework that explicitly accounts for context dependence of biomolecular processes and includes undesired interactions, which we tend to neglect, in the design phase.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Mar 14, 2024
- Source ID
- FA95502310698
Entities
People
- Domitilla Del Vecchio
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- United States Air Force