Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Bacterial Photoshop
"To take control of biological systems, Tabor et al. argue, we need the ability to predict the behavior of complex genetic programs, which are analogous in some ways to electronic circuits that allow logical operations in computers. One strategy to obtain such an understanding is to build such circuits and to observe and to model mathematically their behavior. Tabor et al. used a combination of simple genetic circuits in combination to build a program that allowed a layer of bacteria on a Petri dish to function as an "edge detector" sensitive to areas of transition between high and low illumination (light-dark)." Editor's choice at Science Signaling.
Article:
J. J. Tabor, H. M. Salis, Z. B. Simpson, A. A. Chevalier, A. Levskaya, E. M. Marcotte, C. A. Voight, A. D. Ellington. A synthetic genetic edge detection program. Cell 137, 1272–1281 (2009).
Article:
J. J. Tabor, H. M. Salis, Z. B. Simpson, A. A. Chevalier, A. Levskaya, E. M. Marcotte, C. A. Voight, A. D. Ellington. A synthetic genetic edge detection program. Cell 137, 1272–1281 (2009).
Labels: bacteria, gene circuits