title: Model for a population-based microbial oscillator.
abstract: Genetic oscillators are a major theme of interest in the emerging field of synthetic biology. Until recently, most work has been carried out using intra-cellular oscillators, but this approach restricts the broader applicability of such systems. Motivated by a desire to develop large-scale, spatially distributed cell-based computational systems, we present an initial design for a population-level oscillator which uses three different bacterial strains. Our system is based on the client-server model familiar to computer science, and uses quorum sensing for communication between nodes. Importantly, it is robust to perturbation and noise. We present the results of extensive in silico simulation tests, which confirm the feasibility of our design.
authors.affiliation: School of Computing, Mathematics and Digital Technology, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK. a.moreno@mmu.ac.uk
authors.forename: Angel
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Goñi-Moreno
authors.forename: Martyn
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Amos
mesh_terms: D001419:Bacteria / Q000235:genetics*; D018407:Bacterial Physiological Phenomena; D001683:Biological Clocks / Q000235:genetics; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D008957:Models, Genetic; D053038:Quorum Sensing; D013269:Stochastic Processes; D058615:Synthetic Biology