A Singular Singular Perturbation Problem Arising from a Class of Biomolecular Feedback Controllers

© 2017 IEEE. A long-standing challenge in synthetic biology is to engineer biomolecular systems that can perform robustly in highly uncertain cellular environments. Recently, there has been increasing interest to design biomolecular feedback controllers to address this challenge. Molecular sequestra...

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Main Authors: Qian, Yili, Del Vecchio, Domitilla
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 2021
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/136360
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author Qian, Yili
Del Vecchio, Domitilla
author2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
author_facet Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Qian, Yili
Del Vecchio, Domitilla
author_sort Qian, Yili
collection MIT
description © 2017 IEEE. A long-standing challenge in synthetic biology is to engineer biomolecular systems that can perform robustly in highly uncertain cellular environments. Recently, there has been increasing interest to design biomolecular feedback controllers to address this challenge. Molecular sequestration is one of the proposed feedback mechanisms. For this type of design, when all reactions within the controller are sufficiently fast, the process output can reach a set-point regardless of parametric uncertainties. However, as we demonstrate in this letter, the way in which molecular sequestration affects the fast controller dynamics leads to a singular singularly perturbed (SSP) system. In an SSP system, the boundary layer Jacobian is singular and thus standard singular perturbation approaches cannot be applied, posing difficulties to analytically determine the performance of sequestration-based controllers. In this letter, we consider a class of linear systems that capture the key structure of sequestration-based controllers. We show that, under certain technical conditions, these SSP systems can still be approximated by reduced-order systems that are dependent on the small parameter. This result allows us to analytically evaluate the tracking performance of the linearized model of a sequestration-based controller.
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spelling mit-1721.1/1363602023-01-10T19:05:03Z A Singular Singular Perturbation Problem Arising from a Class of Biomolecular Feedback Controllers Qian, Yili Del Vecchio, Domitilla Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering © 2017 IEEE. A long-standing challenge in synthetic biology is to engineer biomolecular systems that can perform robustly in highly uncertain cellular environments. Recently, there has been increasing interest to design biomolecular feedback controllers to address this challenge. Molecular sequestration is one of the proposed feedback mechanisms. For this type of design, when all reactions within the controller are sufficiently fast, the process output can reach a set-point regardless of parametric uncertainties. However, as we demonstrate in this letter, the way in which molecular sequestration affects the fast controller dynamics leads to a singular singularly perturbed (SSP) system. In an SSP system, the boundary layer Jacobian is singular and thus standard singular perturbation approaches cannot be applied, posing difficulties to analytically determine the performance of sequestration-based controllers. In this letter, we consider a class of linear systems that capture the key structure of sequestration-based controllers. We show that, under certain technical conditions, these SSP systems can still be approximated by reduced-order systems that are dependent on the small parameter. This result allows us to analytically evaluate the tracking performance of the linearized model of a sequestration-based controller. 2021-10-27T20:35:02Z 2021-10-27T20:35:02Z 2019 2020-07-08T14:42:53Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/136360 en 10.1109/LCSYS.2018.2845547 IEEE Control Systems Letters Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) MIT web domain
spellingShingle Qian, Yili
Del Vecchio, Domitilla
A Singular Singular Perturbation Problem Arising from a Class of Biomolecular Feedback Controllers
title A Singular Singular Perturbation Problem Arising from a Class of Biomolecular Feedback Controllers
title_full A Singular Singular Perturbation Problem Arising from a Class of Biomolecular Feedback Controllers
title_fullStr A Singular Singular Perturbation Problem Arising from a Class of Biomolecular Feedback Controllers
title_full_unstemmed A Singular Singular Perturbation Problem Arising from a Class of Biomolecular Feedback Controllers
title_short A Singular Singular Perturbation Problem Arising from a Class of Biomolecular Feedback Controllers
title_sort singular singular perturbation problem arising from a class of biomolecular feedback controllers
url https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/136360
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