Synthetic Biologists Add Cooperative Molecules to their Toolkit for Programming Signal Processing (IMAGE)
Caption
Synthetic biologists designed a system for engineering cells that respond digitally to analog signals. Cells are pre-programmed to produce transcription factor protein components (top left) in proportion to the strength of an incoming signal. Upon reaching a critical concentration, components self-assemble (top right) into a protein complex that initiates transcription of a pre-programmed target gene. The more modules a self-assembled transcription complex contains (bottom, left to right), the more sharply it responds to the critical threshold.
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Image courtesy of Rice University
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Image courtesy of Rice University
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