All of the organisms have the synchronized clock controlled by molecule to keep the pace with natural environment. And such circadian behavior can be achieved by an oscillator. This paper have described an synthetic oscillator driven by the sinusoidally changed concentration of arabinose. This oscillator is constructed by a positive feedback loop contained AraC and a negative feedback loop contained Lacl. So researcher can stimulate the expression of araC and lacI by periodically change the concentration of the transcription inducer. The author also explored the entrainment of this oscillator.
No way to modify graph?..sigh...
ReplyDeleteI agree that oscillation of gene expression is a very important aspect of the cell to study, but I don't quite understand what kind of synthetic biology application it could have. Would this be to express a 'drug' protein, providing a dosage at a certain time? How about basic biology applications? If you express a gene that normally doesn't have an oscillatory pattern, with an oscillating promoter, what can you really learn about the function of that gene?
ReplyDeleteAnyone interested in a plant story? So, it turns out that a lot of fungi release there spores early in the morning, and plants have corresponding defense-priming genes that oscillate in such a way as to be highly expressed early in the morning. Cool!
ReplyDelete