Qubic: Biological Information Technology Systems: Self-Perfecting Genetic Circuits

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EIA-0130613Arnold, FrancesCalifornia Institute of TechnologyBITS: Biological Information Technology Systems - BITS: Self-Perfecting Genetic CircuitsWe propose to develop efficient, evolutionary design strategies for constructing functional de novo geneticcircuits. We will apply methods of molecular evolution, which have proven highly successful forengineering proteins with improved or altered properties, to complex genetic systems involving multiplerepressors, operators, and promoters. We believe that evolution will prove to be generally applicable foroptimizing individual devices as well as complex genetic circuits, and our goal will be to demonstratehow evolutionary searches are best performed in order to build libraries of devices and assemble theminto functional circuits.We anticipate that this research will establish a general strategy for de novo genetic circuit designand provide new insight into the natural algorithms of information processing in biological systems andbiological complexity. This research exploits, in powerful combination, the strengths of classicalapproaches in electrical circuit design (characterizing the device physics of gates, then composingcircuits from well understood components) with adaptation mechanisms (mutation and selection)that arethe hallmark of biological systems.