Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Engineering cellular synchrony
"Scientists have engineered bacteria that can communicate with each other in a synchronized manner, lighting up in waves of fluorescent green [...] The engineered cells also offer a new model system for studying emergent systems, or how complex properties -- such as synchronized oscillation -- arise from simpler starting materials -- a two genes network." Full article @ The Scientist.
A supernova burst in a colony of coupled genetic clocks after critical cell density.
Image: Tal Danino, Octavio Mondragon-Palamino, Lev Tsimring
Labels: bacteria, complexity, dynamical systems
