Introduction

This is our first year of participation and as such, we are pretty excited about the prospects. We are a group of students from the Chemical Engineering Department and from the School of Biosciences & Bioengineering. The most exciting aspect that we found about this competition was the interdisciplinary learning. A chemical reactor system invariably involves the design of control structures, and it is the design of these structures in a biological system that we wish to attain via our project.

A major objective of synthetic biology is to unveil the inherent design principles prevailing in biological circuits. Multiple feedback loops (having both positive and negative regulation) are highly prevalent in biological systems. The relevance of such a design in biological systems is unclear. Our team has used synthetic biology approaches to answer these questions. Our team comprises of nine undergraduates, three graduate students as student mentors and two faculty mentors, one each from biology and engineering background. The project specifically deals with the analysis of the effect of single and multiple feedback loops on gene expression. This project involves theoretical and experimental studies. We have designed synthetic constructs to mimic multiple feedbacks. The focus of our experimental work is to visualize the effect of multiple feedback loops on the synthetic construct using single cell analysis. The project provides insights into the roles of multiple feedback loops in biological systems.

Sponsors