2015 Synthetic Biology: Engineering, Evolution & Design (SEED)

Logic Gates As sRNA Dependent Transcriptional Attenuators: A Pause for Thought

Author

Pascoe J Harvey - Presenter, University of Edinburgh

Within the field of synthetic biology, genetic circuits have become progressively more complex, requiring more sophisticated regulation and leading to a drive to generate logic gates within biological systems that are orthogonal, scalable, respond rapidly and perform multilayer logical operations. The reprogrammable nature of RNA folding and binding combined with rapid synthesis and degradation within biological systems provides useful tools to achieve this.

It is possible to dispense with the requirement for proteins to propagate a signal through a logical operation which in the past has acted as a constraint on the size of orthogonal libraries, using instead sRNA dependent transcriptional attenuators. Here we present a new genetic learning algorithm for the de novo design and synthesis of the sequences required for sRNA dependent transcriptional attenuators. The Algorithm uses a combination of RNA folding predictions and dimer formation kinetics, aided by the use of transcriptional pausing sites to increase the time window for sRNA-Attenuator interactions.

Sequences generated by the algorithm are currently being tested and work to date will be presented.