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| Established in 1958, [http://www.iitb.ac.in IIT Bombay] is one of the most recognized centers of academic excellence in the country today. The excellence of its academic programs, a robust research and development program with parallel improvement in facilities and infrastructure have kept it at par with the best institutions in the world. The ideas on which such institutes are built evolve and change with national aspirations, national perspectives, and global trends. At IIT Bombay we are continuously seeking to extend the boundaries of our research in a sustained manner with clear cut executable goals, grounded solidly in national realities.
This is our first year of participation and as such, we are pretty excited about the prospects. We are a group of chemical engineering and bioschool students. The most exciting aspect that we found about this competition was the interdisciplinary learning. A chemical reactor system invariably involves the design of control structures, and it is the design of these structures in a biological system that we wish to attain via our project.
A major objective of synthetic biology is to unveil the inherent design principles prevailing in biological circuits. Multiple feedback loops (having both positive and negative regulation) are highly prevalent in biological systems. The relevance of such a design in biological systems is unclear. Our team will use synthetic biology approaches to answer these questions. Our team comprises of nine undergraduates, 3 graduate students as student mentor and two faculty mentors, one each from biology and engineering background. The project specifically deals with the analysis of effect of single and multiple feedback loops on gene expression. This project will involve theoretical and experimental studies. We have designed synthetic constructs to mimic multiple feedbacks. The focus of our experimental work will be to visualize the effect of multiple feedback loops on the synthetic construct using single cell analysis. The project will provide insights into the roles of multiple feedback loops in biological systems.
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