Team:Kyoto/GSDD/Introduction

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Introduction

Motivation

Fig.1

In synthetic biology field, biologists and bioengineers design and construct a variety of gene circuits to solve their facing problems such as medical, environmental, food, and energy problems. However, it is difficult to control the lifespan of these engineered cells that contain synthetic circuits in many cases: the cells tend to repeat cell division and increase their number in the given environment. Moreover, if point mutations or deletions were introduced into such engineered cells, it may cause serious problems to the natural environment, because they may cause the unexpected behavior (biohazard) against natural living systems. This is the big issue in this field. However, it is difficult to invent an effective approach to control the cell fate of the engineered bacteria.

For instance, several synthetic biologists aimed to regulate cell population by introducing a negative feedback loops or the other circuits in cells (REF). As a result, they could control the cell populations in some cases. However, these regulations can not precisely control the temporal gene expression depending on cell division. Thus, we aimed to design and construct a system to control the temporal gene expression depending on cell division without using the other factors (e.g., small molecules such as Tetracycline or complicated genetic circuits ).

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 ==Motivation==
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-In bioengineering, biologists design gene circuits as a mean to solve their facing problems such as medical problems, environmental problems, food problems, energy problems and so on. Then they suppose future implement like injection into human blood stream, scattering across natural environment etc. But in many cases those designed cells repeat cell division and increase its number in the environment. And then sometimes they got tiny internal errors like point mutation into their genes, but show us unexpected behavior and cause serious problems to its environment. This is one of the big problems, to solve that, we bioengineers have to make serious efforts. But it is quite difficult to propose an effective solution in many cases.
+In synthetic biology field, biologists and bioengineers design and construct a variety of gene circuits to solve their facing problems such as medical, environmental, food, and energy problems. However, it is difficult to control the lifespan of these engineered cells that contain synthetic circuits in many cases: the cells tend to repeat cell division and increase their number in the given environment. Moreover, if point mutations or deletions were introduced into such engineered cells, it may cause serious problems to the natural environment, because they may cause the unexpected behavior (biohazard) against natural living systems. This is the big issue in this field. However, it is difficult to invent an effective approach to control the cell fate of the engineered bacteria.
-Many biologists try to prevent them by using other functionally designed gene circuits, intending cell’s population to be regulated by negative feedback loops and then, as a result, the cells cannot increase its number unlimitedly. But those indirect systematic regulations using other gene circuits are difficult to tune up its parameters to cells and its living environment. (Roughly to say, it is very messy.) So we hope to make a flexible method to directly control transformed cell’s behavior without using those obstinate gene circuits.
+For instance, several synthetic biologists aimed to regulate cell population by introducing a negative feedback loops or the other circuits in cells (REF). As a result, they could control the cell populations in some cases. However, these regulations can not precisely control the temporal gene expression depending on cell division. Thus, we aimed to design and construct a system to control the temporal gene expression depending on cell division without using the other factors (e.g., small molecules such as Tetracycline or complicated genetic circuits ).
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