Engineering transcription-based digital logic devices

Abstract

The goal of Synthetic Biology is to engineer systems from biological parts. One class of systems are those whose purpose is to process information. My work seeks to build transcription-based devices for use in combinational digital logic. Preliminary characterization experiments show that existing devices fall short of desired device behavior. I propose to develop a novel implementation of transcription-based logic by designing synthetic transcription factors from well-characterized DNA binding and dimerization domains. Initial modeling work serves to inform design of these devices.