15 NSFBIO: Excitocell: A rewired eukaryotic cell model for the analysis and design of cellular morphogenesis

可激发动力学是复杂系统中涌现行为的一个基本例子，尽管被科学和工程的各个分支观察和研究，但在神经系统背景之外的生物学中很少受到关注。PI发现的兴奋性动力学代表了一种易于量化的皮层模式形成行为，这种行为可能由一个紧凑的分子模块控制，因此适合于综合数学和实验研究。PI提出了一种新的合成生物学方法，在简化的重连细胞和高水平的实验控制的离体系统中重建皮层兴奋性。采用这种系统和合成生物学方法，与自上而下的遗传分析相反，旨在产生核心生理模块的实验验证模型。

Excitable dynamics is a fundamental example of an emergent behavior in complexsystems, which, although observed and studied by various branches of science and engineering,has received little attention in biology outside the context of the nervous system. The excitabledynamics discovered by the PIs represents a readily quantifiable cortical pattern-formingbehavior that is potentially controlled by a compact molecular module, and thus amenable tointegrated mathematical and experimental study.The PIs propose a novel synthetic biology approach to reconstitute cortical excitabilityin simplified rewired cells and in an ex vivo system with a high level of experimental control.Adopting this systems and synthetic biology approach, in contrast to top-down genetic analysis,is intended to produce an experimentally-validated model of the core physiological module.