Endy:Research

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Synthetic Biology Our goal is to make biology easy to engineer. Undergraduate and PhD students in the lab pursue independent research projects of their own choosing that fall within this broad agenda. Reading their dissertations and research papers is one good way to learn about the sort of work that the lab has been able to support, including background and introductory materials as well as future ideas and directions. If you are looking for a place to work on a new (or old) research idea that's relevant to synthetic biology we would like to hear from you. Biological Systems Modeling We are working to develop and improve general methods for representing cellular behavior. Consider, for example, Magritte’s painting Clairvoyance (1936); a man appears to look at an egg while painting a bird. At least three models could explain the scene. First, the man is clairvoyant – he is able to perceive the potential of the egg and paint the appropriate animal (i.e., bird in place of platypus). Second, the man has prior knowledge that eggs of a certain type turn into particular birds – he describes what he expects will occur based on past experience. Third, the man has the ability, hidden from the viewer, to determine the relevant physical state of the egg. Furthermore, the man has access to a “standard model” for cellular chemistry and physics. Taken together, he is able to observe any particular egg and predict the relevant properties of the resulting animal. We are working to make the third model happen. [modeling would be easier if eggs were designed to be easy to model in the first place – please see our interests re: Design of Integrated Biological Systems above] Current Projects (partial listing) Engineering the Chassis/System Interface - Barry Canton Library-based Construction - Jason Kelly & Josh Michener Rebuilding T7 - Sri Kosuri Receiver Definition - Ania Labno & Barry Canton SortoStat - Jason Kelly & Bryan Hernandez TABASCO - Sri Kosuri Time-Dependent Analysis of Signaling Pathways - Ty Thomson