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Welcome to the iGEM Team of the Technische Universität München.

Preliminary Project Description

Molecular Networks and State of the Art

A fundamental task in the creation of a new biological systems is the development of sophisticated and flexible logic networks. A logic network responds to incoming signals and creates output signals in a precisely determined manner. This is accomplished by interconnecting and rearranging basic logical units. Until now, several types of networks have been developed using logical units such as riboswitches or genetic switches. However, these biological logic units relied mainly on protein-based or metabolite-based interactions, which remain poorly understood. The undissolved de novo creation of specific protein or metabolite interactions limits the ability to design large networks of sufficient complexity.

Project Goals

To overcome the limitations mentioned above, our goal is to design a new type of logical unit. This novel "switch" has to be capable of building up logic gates which in turn can form a complex network. To fulfill this requirement, we used the main principle of electric circuits as template. An electric circuit consists of several transistors and interconnecting wires. Whereas all transistors are built equally, wires generate a specific addressing resulting in the desired logic operation. For our switch, each logic units contains a recognition element for addressing and a switching core resembling the transitor. To implement this basic concept, the recognition site uses specific RNA-RNA-hybridization, the switching core is designed in the style of transcriptional termination/antitermination processes occuring in nature.

Current work

Currently we are developing an assay to screen several termination processes in vivo and in vitro to obtain an optimized switching core, capable of antitermination and compatible to our recognition site. Future work will focus on fine-tuning one or more switching candidates. The goal is to establish a robust switching core as module, which can simply and specifically be addressed by varing the sequence of the recognition site.