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Research

Biological systems - including the simplest cells - exhibit a broad range of functions to thrive in their environment. Research in the Imperial College Centre for Synthetic Biology is focused on the possibility of engineering the underlying biochemical processes to solve many of the challenges facing society, from healthcare to sustainable energy. In particular, we model, analyse, design and build biological and biochemical systems in living cells and/or in cell extracts, both exploring and enhancing the engineering potential of biology.

As part of our research we develop novel methods to accelerate the celebrated Design-Build-Test-Learn synthetic biology cycle. As such research in the Centre for Synthetic Biology highly multi- and interdisciplinary covering computational modelling and machine learning approaches; automated platform development and genetic circuit engineering ; multi-cellular and multi-organismal interactions, including gene drive and genome engineering; metabolic engineering; in vitro/cell-free synthetic biology; engineered phages and directed evolution; and biomimetics, biomaterials and biological engineering.

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Broedel:2016:10.1038/ncomms13858,
author = {Broedel, AK and Jaramillo, A and Isalan, M},
doi = {10.1038/ncomms13858},
journal = {Nature Communications},
pages = {1--9},
title = {Engineering orthogonal dual transcription factors for multi-input synthetic promoters},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms13858},
volume = {7},
year = {2016}
}

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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - Synthetic biology has seen an explosive growth in the capability of engineering artificial gene circuits from transcription factors (TFs), particularly in bacteria. However, most artificial networks still employ the same core set of TFs (for example LacI, TetR and cI). The TFs mostly function via repression and it is difficult to integrate multiple inputs in promoter logic. Here we present to our knowledge the first set of dual activator-repressor switches for orthogonal logic gates, based on bacteriophage λ cI variants and multi-input promoter architectures. Our toolkit contains 12 TFs, flexibly operating as activators, repressors, dual activator–repressors or dual repressor–repressors, on up to 270 synthetic promoters. To engineer non cross-reacting cI variants, we design a new M13 phagemid-based system for the directed evolution of biomolecules. Because cI is used in so many synthetic biology projects, the new set of variants will easily slot into the existing projects of other groups, greatly expanding current engineering capacities.
AU  - Broedel,AK
AU  - Jaramillo,A
AU  - Isalan,M
DO  - 10.1038/ncomms13858
EP  - 9
PY  - 2016///
SN  - 2041-1723
SP  - 1
TI  - Engineering orthogonal dual transcription factors for multi-input synthetic promoters
T2  - Nature Communications
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms13858
UR  - https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13858
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/41931
VL  - 7
ER  -