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Throughout evolutionary history, spatial pattern formation has played a vital role in developmental biology. This is seen clearly in nature throughout the eukaryotic domain; examples include coat patterns (think zebras) and body segmentation (differentiated stem cells). We want to bring this sort of spatial pattern creation to the prokaryotic world. Previous iGEM projects have created patterns that require a projection of some sort of image before the cells react. We are engineering a strain that will create a pattern with no input from outside the system except an inducer.

This genetic circuit allows us to create biological systems with spatially varying genetic expression profiles. This has applications in a variety of fields such as nanofabrication, tissue engineering, environmental engineering, and of course, synthetic biology.