title: Designing Conservation Relations in Layered Synthetic Biomolecular Networks.
abstract: In Synthetic Biology, biomolecular networks are designed and constructed to perform specified tasks. Design strategies for these networks tend to center on tuning the parameters of mathematical models to achieve a specified behavior, and implementing these parameters experimentally. This design strategy often assumes a fixed network structure that defines the possible behaviors, which may be too restrictive for our purposes. This paper investigates the extent to which the state space of a synthetic network can also be designed and shaped by parametric tuning. We exploit timescale separation to implement new, nonlinear, tunable conservation relations that hold for all times beyond a fast transient. We demonstrate an application of this design strategy by flexibly constraining the possible behaviors of a gene regulatory network through the design of fast protein interactions.
authors.forename: Thomas P
authors.initials: TP
authors.lastname: Prescott
authors.forename: Antonis
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Papachristodoulou
mesh_terms: D053263:Gene Regulatory Networks / Q000502:physiology*; D008954:Models, Biological; D011506:Proteins / Q000378:metabolism; D058615:Synthetic Biology / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D011506:Proteins