Distributed biological computation with multicellular engineered networks.
Artikel i vetenskaplig tidskrift, 2011

Ongoing efforts within synthetic and systems biology have been directed towards the building of artificial computational devices using engineered biological units as basic building blocks. Such efforts, inspired in the standard design of electronic circuits, are limited by the difficulties arising from wiring the basic computational units (logic gates) through the appropriate connections, each one to be implemented by a different molecule. Here, we show that there is a logically different form of implementing complex Boolean logic computations that reduces wiring constraints thanks to a redundant distribution of the desired output among engineered cells. A practical implementation is presented using a library of engineered yeast cells, which can be combined in multiple ways. Each construct defines a logic function and combining cells and their connections allow building more complex synthetic devices. As a proof of principle, we have implemented many logic functions by using just a few engineered cells. Of note, small modifications and combination of those cells allowed for implementing more complex circuits such as a multiplexer or a 1-bit adder with carry, showing the great potential for re-utilization of small parts of the circuit. Our results support the approach of using cellular consortia as an efficient way of engineering complex tasks not easily solvable using single-cell implementations.

Författare

Sergi Regot

Javier Macia

Núria Conde

Kentaro Furukawa

Göteborgs universitet

Jimmy Kjellén

Göteborgs universitet

Tom Peeters

Stefan Hohmann

Göteborgs universitet

Eulàlia de Nadal

Francesc Posas

Ricard Solé

Nature

0028-0836 (ISSN) 1476-4687 (eISSN)

Vol. 469 7329 207-11

Ämneskategorier

Biokemi och molekylärbiologi

Mikrobiologi

DOI

10.1038/nature09679

PubMed

21150900

Mer information

Skapat

2017-10-10