IGEM:Harvard/2006/Brainstorming Papers - Jeffrey

Pattern formation and quorum sensing

1. Basu S, Gerchman Y, Collins CH, Arnold FH, and Weiss R. A synthetic multicellular system for programmed pattern formation. Nature. 2005 Apr 28;434(7037):1130-4. DOI:10.1038/nature03461 |
2. Kobayashi H, Kaern M, Araki M, Chung K, Gardner TS, Cantor CR, and Collins JJ. Programmable cells: interfacing natural and engineered gene networks. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2004 Jun 1;101(22):8414-9. DOI:10.1073/pnas.0402940101 |

Basu et al.

• Basu et al created a gene circuit with a non-monotonic response to AHL concentration.
• Main idea: use two concentration boundaries to define three regions with different transcriptional activity
  • GFP is repressed at low and high concentrations of AHL, and expressed at medium concentrations
  • Basu et al. created three variants with different upper boundaries
    • Concentration varies with distance; thus, a mixture of different variants of bacteria produces a bullseye pattern when exposed to a point source of AHL
    • Multiple AHL sources produce pretty pictures
• We could reuse the basic idea behind their circuit if we need to define a multiple-region response to some stimulus