Team:Sweden/Project

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Project

We want to implement an automaton in the E-Coli cell. It is based on a few simple grammer rules on how to parse a simple sentence like
The little girl plays ball or Boys stroke the little dog.
These simple rules are :

S --> NP VP
NP --> (det) (adj) N
VP --> V (NP)

We target only the parts of speech (POS) tags which in these above grammars are:

NP:Noun Phrase VP: Verb Phrase
(det:Determiner) (adj:adjective) N: Noun
VP:Verb Phrase V:Verb NP:Noun Phrase

This way the grammar can be implemented as a finite state automaton (FSA) and not as a push-down automaton.

A finite state automation is a 5-tupel A = (Q, Σ, δ, s0, F), where Q is a finite set of states, Σ is the finite set of input symbols (alphabet), δ is the transition function, δ: Q × Σ -> Q, s0 is the start state and F is the set of final/accepting states.

Our Aim

The sentence in our project is a string of different reagents which will be introduced to the cell one by one. As soon as a wrong input is detected the cell will light up red. A sentence is finished by a stop reagent and then the cell will light up green.

The image represents an automaton that show how state transition occurs in a particular sentence parsing automaton

Safety issues

\ We suggest our plasmid using a current Biobrick in the bank and no new bio bricks are suggested or built. So no safety issue is raised so far.