Bacterial photography and edge detection: engineering light sensitive circuits in E. coli
The focus of this project is to explore how synthetic biology can enable the combination of natural and engineered genetic parts, by creating an exotic functionality not typically found in nature.
The Idea
The project aims to reproduce the work published in two papers by Levskaya et al. (Nature, 2005) and Tabor et al. (Cell, 2009). These publications describe synthetic genetic circuits in E. coli capable of responding to light and detecting edges in images. Edge detection is of interest because nature is typically low-pass, and because it has a direct analogy in engineering applications including signal processing. Generally, the project aims to develop along two parallel “biological” and “computational” branches designed to be mutually informative and complementary. Theoretical design of genetic networks will focus on computationally-aided mathematical understanding of the system and selection of biological parts that match the desired behaviour, hence bridging biology and engineering. Depending on the progress made, we hope that our theoretical exploration may guide novel experiments not shown in the work to be replicated and improve the edge detection system. We will make our work available to other groups in collaboration to support novel applications and enable open innovation. Alongside the practical project, invited speakers will develop some of these topics in more detail, present current research, or expand on wider areas of synthetic biology.
The Team
President, Bill Jia
Part IIb Engineering Tripos
Vice-President, Camillo Moschner
PhD Candidate, BBSRC DTP in Biological Sciences
Treasurer, Stefan Grossfurthner
PhD Candidate, Plant Sciences
Secretary, Andre Zylstra
PhD Candidate, Babraham Institute
Project Manager, Biological, Jarrod Shilts
PhD Candidate, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
Project Manager, Biological, Arin Wongprommoon
Part II Biochemistry, Natural Sciences Tripos
Project Manager, Biological, Dr. Eugene Park
Postdoctoral Fellow, Ringshausen Lab (MRC Stem Cell Institute)
Project Manager, Hardware, Joshua Lawrence
PhD Candidate, BBSRC DTP in Biological Sciences
Webmaster/Social Media Officer, Erica Lee
Part IIa Manufacturing Engineering Tripos
Project Outputs
Project Report
Supplementary Figure 1, Supplementary Figure 2, Supplementary Figure 3, Supplementary Figure 4, Supplementary Figure 5, Supplementary Figure 6, Supplementary Figure 7a, Supplementary Figure 7b, Supplementary Table 1, Supplementary Table 2a, Supplementary Table 2b, Supplementary Table 3
