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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{Pothoulakis:2018:10.1371/journal.pone.0194588,
author = {Pothoulakis, G and Ellis, T},
doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0194588},
journal = {PLoS ONE},
title = {Construction of hybrid regulated mother-specific yeast promoters for inducible differential gene expression},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0194588},
volume = {13},
year = {2018}
}

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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - Engineered promoters with predefined regulation are a key tool for synthetic biology that enable expression on demand and provide the logic for genetic circuits. To expand the availability of synthetic biology tools for S. cerevisiae yeast, we here used hybrid promoter engineering to construct tightly-controlled, externally-inducible promoters that only express in haploid mother cells that have contributed a daughter cell to the population. This is achieved by combining elements from the native HO promoter and from a TetR-repressible synthetic promoter, with the performance of these promoters characterized by both flow cytometry and microfluidics-based fluorescence microscopy. These new engineered promoters are provided as an enabling tool for future synthetic biology applications that seek to exploit differentiation within a yeast population.
AU  - Pothoulakis,G
AU  - Ellis,T
DO  - 10.1371/journal.pone.0194588
PY  - 2018///
SN  - 1932-6203
TI  - Construction of hybrid regulated mother-specific yeast promoters for inducible differential gene expression
T2  - PLoS ONE
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0194588
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/58046
VL  - 13
ER  -

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