Patterns are everywhere in biology. Some, like zebra stripes, are easy to see, while other patterns like those that appear during animal development may be more subtle. Underneath the expression of these patterns are complex genetic networks that interpret specific cues from the environment and use this data to direct cells, or even populations of cells, to self organize and act. Given the importance of pattern generation in biology, we wanted to see if we could construct a synthetic circuit that would allow us to generate patterns in a community of inter-communicating cells in response to a simple stimuli; in our case, this stimuli would be light.
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