CIF: Small: WetComm:Foundations of Wet Communication Theory

该项目的目标是开发变革性的概念和工具，以描述、建模和设计基于生物细胞的活通信设备的系统，以控制生物环境中的信息传播。这些信息是细胞在自然界中如何交流的基础，对于它们的基本活动，如生长和繁殖，以及它们与其他细胞和它们所生活的环境的协调，都是至关重要的。更广泛地说，这些信息传播的方式影响到人类健康、我们的环境、食品和能源资源以及其他方面，它的工程控制将使大量改变游戏规则的应用成为可能。虽然合成生物学学科提供了在实验上展示工程生物细胞能力的工具，但目前缺乏一个统一和连贯的理论框架来专门开发和优化它们的通信。目前的通信理论工具不能捕捉到生物通信系统的一些重要特征，这些系统生活、生长和繁殖。根据这些特性及其对工程生物细胞如何量化、处理和交换信息的影响，本项目试图通过重新思考通信理论来解决这些局限性。本项目将通过以下方式追求上述研究方向：i)定义新的信息论度量标准，不仅解决通过分子过程进行的细胞间信息交换，而且解决这些机制与细胞获取、存储和利用能量生长和复制的方式的相关性；Ii)探索通信工程方法的应用，通过设计基于系统和合成生物学的系统组件，例如化学反应、分子传输和基于DNA的生物电路，用于信息源和信道编码；iii)在合成生物学的标准实践中结合基于新度量和通信工程方法的正向工程方法，以优化、设计、建模和制造准备在生物细胞系统中实施的生物电路。这些研究活动将为通信理论和工程中一个新的跨学科分支铺平道路，在那里，通信系统的开发基于系统和合成生物学的工具，而不是经典的电子学。此外，该项目有望通过以信息为中心的方法来设计和优化基因工程细胞，从而为日益增长的合成生物学领域做出贡献。研究和教育将包括具有跨学科背景的本科生和研究生，增加中学生的参与，特别是激励女性，在通信工程领域历史上代表性不足，但占生物学专业的一半以上。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The goal of this project is to develop transformative concepts and tools to characterize, model, and design systems based on living communicating devices, i.e., biological cells, to control the propagation of information in biological environments. This information is at the basis of how cells communicate in nature, and it is fundamental to their basic activities, such as growth and reproduction, and their coordination with other cells and the environment in which they live. More broadly, the way this information propagates impacts human health, our environment, food and energy resources, and others, and its engineered control would enable a plethora of game-changing applications. While the discipline of synthetic biology provides tools to experimentally demonstrate the capabilities of engineered biological cells, there currently lacks a unified and coherent theoretical framework to specifically develop and optimize their communications. Current communication theory tools fall short in capturing some important peculiarities of biological communication systems that live, grow, and reproduce. This project seeks to address these limitations by re-thinking communication theory in light of these peculiarities and their impact on how information is quantified, processed, and exchanged by engineered biological cells.This project will pursue the aforementioned research direction by: i) defining novel information-theoretic metrics to address not only the cell-to-cell information exchange through molecular processes, but also the correlation of these mechanisms with the way cells harvest, store, and utilize energy to grow and replicate; ii) exploring the application of communication engineering methods to optimize communications according to these novel metrics by designing system components based on systems and synthetic biology, such as chemical reactions, molecule transport, and DNA-based biological circuits, for information source and channel coding; iii) incorporating a forward-engineering approach based on the novel metrics and communication engineering methods within standard practices in synthetic biology to optimize, design, model, and manufacture biological circuits ready to be implemented in biological cell systems. These research activities will pave the way for a novel interdisciplinary branch in communication theory and engineering, where communication systems are developed based on tools from systems and synthetic biology in place of classical electronics. Moreover, this project is expected to contribute to the growing field of synthetic biology with an information-centric approach to the design and optimization of genetically engineered cells. Research and education will involve undergraduate and graduate students with interdisciplinary background, increase the participation of middle-high school students, and in particular inspire women, historically underrepresented in communication engineering but representing more than half of the majors in biology, to embrace this interdisciplinary field.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.