Week 7 HW: Genetic Circuits Part II

Intracellular Artificial Neural Networks (IANNs)

1. What advantages do IANNs have over traditional genetic circuits, whose input/output behaviors are Boolean functions?

IANNs more easily provides for graded responses and can scale intelligent responses; they can approximate every mathematical function and not just step functions.

2. Describe a useful application for an IANN; include a detailed description of input/output behavior, as well as any limitations an IANN might face to achieve your goal.

IANNs could classify the cell surface of tumor cells and initiate the secretion of the best paracrine messengers to recruit NK and Tc cells. The input would be the MHC of the target cell and the IANN would be a classifier whose output would be one of various preprogrammed cellular responses. The IANN would need to select a particular cellular response robustly without being modified.

3. Below is a diagram depicting an intracellular single-layer perceptron where the X1 input is DNA encoding for the Csy4 endoribonuclease and the X2 input is DNA encoding for a fluorescent protein output whose mRNA is regulated by Csy4. Tx: transcription; Tl: translation.

Fungal Materials

1. What are some examples of existing fungal materials and what are they used for? What are their advantages and disadvantages over traditional counterparts?

Mycelium-based styrofoam, myco-bricks and myco-leather: that’s better than existing styrofoam, bricks and leather because it’s biodegradable, carbon-lighter and cruelty-free.

2. What might you want to genetically engineer fungi to do and why? What are the advantages of doing synthetic biology in fungi as opposed to bacteria?

I’d like to engineer them as an alternative protein source and biofoundry. Fungi are eukaryotic, enabling native eukaryotic gene regulation and post-translational modification, can be grown off of waste material and fungi have much higher translational efficiency.

First DNA Twist Order

lux operon engineered to function as an AND genetic circuit