Team:Imperial College London/Genetic Circuit Key

Key to Genetic Circuit Diagrams

This key explains some of the symbols used for the genetic circuit diagrams.

A promoter is a genetic element in DNA that regulates the transcription of a downstream gene. Promoters can be induced or repressed by external factors and the expression of the downstream gene is consequently under control of the same external factors. We use promoters as the control mechanisms under which the expression of our genes is controlled.
An RBS is a ribosome binding site. This is a region of DNA to which the ribosome binds in the initiation of protein translation. An RBS is required adjacent to each coding sequence to in order to have expression.
A Protein Coding Sequence is commonly referred to as a gene. This is a section of DNA of which the nucleotide sequence is translated by ribosomes into the amino acid sequence of proteins.
Terminators are required at the end of each operon (genes under control of one promoter) in order to signal to the RNA polymerase that the operon has finished, and to release from the DNA strand during DNA transcription. We have used double terminators as standard to improve the efficiency.