Synthetic Counter (iGem2005 ETH Zurich)
From 2006.igem.org
Abstract. We report here the design and implementation in vivo of a gene circuit that can count up to 4. In essence, it uses two toggle switches, each storing 1 bit, to keep track of the 4 states. The design of the counter is highly modular, in the hope that it can be included as a unit in larger circuits, but also combined with similar units to keep track of a much larger number of states, up to (2^(n+1)) with n units. To facilitate further development and integration to other projects, the counter is available in form of BioBricks.
Contents |
Introduction
The past few years have seen the emergence of the field of synthetic biology, in which functional units are designed and built into cells for particular purposes and ultimately for a better understanding of Life's mechanisms. Previous work include the design of elementary modules such as an oscillator (Elowitz00) and a toggle switch (Atkinson03), or specific gene circuit to generate a particular behaviour, such as artificial cell-cell communication (Bulter04) or pattern-forming behaviour (Basu2005).
