Team:ETH Zurich/Circuit
Circuit
This page will tell you all about the design of the genetic circuit that makes CATE work. To read about how we developed the idea of CATE, visit the Story of CATE. To skip to story and jump directly to how CATE is designed to treat tumors, see CATE in Action. To read about the design principles that helped us structure, organize and execute our project, go to Design.
Introduction
Genetic circuits and biological information processing are crucial elements of synthetic biology.
For CATE we specifically designed a circuit able to integrate signals from both the outside and the inside of the body. It features two safety checkpoints to ensure superiority in terms of off-target damage and controllability compared to conventional cancer treatment strategies. We divide our circuit into five functions:
Click on the functions to read more.
The Circuit
The genetic parts are located on two plasmids, the actuator plasmid and the regulator plasmid. Genes used for control of the behavior are located on the regulator plasmid. These include luxR, lldP and lldR designed to function as an AND gate (Fa: Tumor Sensor) and tlpA (Fd: Heat Sensor). The actuator plasmid contains genes for the actions CATE can take. The genes for bacterioferritin (Fb: MRI Contrast Agent), azurin (Fc: Anti-Cancer Toxin) and protein E (Fe: Cell Lysis) are located on this plasmid. Additionally, to enable quorum sensing (part of Fa:Tumor Sensor), the gene for LuxI is also on the actuator plasmid. In general, the regulator plasmid contains the sensors to integrate inputs from the outside world, whereas the actuator plasmid produces molecules that act on the environment.
