From 2006.igem.org

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Intro

Emergent sorting.

Principle

Two populations of bacteria with different clustering behavior and colors.

The Aggregation approach

Basic Idea

The idea would be to have two types of E. coli : Type G would express GFP (they look green), other type R would express RFP (they look red)

The starting material is an homogeneous mixture of red and green, i.e. of G- and R-type bacteria.

The G-type bacteria would start, under induction, to express an aggregation factor, e.g. Antigen 43 (Ag43) working on stable media culture. Thus, the G-type bacteria would start to gather forming green dots on the plate.

The R-type bacteria express their own aggregation factor (Ag43), but with a certain delay and thus leaving time to the G-type bacteria to sufficiently cluster first.

This would produce a sorting behavior, i.e. green bacteria surrounded by red bacteria the latter probably forming rings.

possible Extensions

Discussion

>> for comments, questions and temporary remarks go to the Talk:Sorting_Bacteria

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