Genomic mining of prokaryotic repressors for orthogonal logic gates

Genetic circuits perform computational operations based on interactions between freely diffusing molecules within a cell. When transcription factors are combined to build a circuit, unintended interactions can disrupt its function. Here, we apply 'part mining' to build a library of 73 TetR...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Tamsir, Alvin, Clancy, Kevin, Peterson, Todd, Stanton, Brynne C., Nielsen, Alec Andrew, Voigt, Christopher A.
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biological Engineering
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Nature Publishing Group 2015
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/99526
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0844-4776
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2171-8460
Description
Summary:Genetic circuits perform computational operations based on interactions between freely diffusing molecules within a cell. When transcription factors are combined to build a circuit, unintended interactions can disrupt its function. Here, we apply 'part mining' to build a library of 73 TetR-family repressors gleaned from prokaryotic genomes. The operators of a subset were determined using an in vitro method, and this information was used to build synthetic promoters. The promoters and repressors were screened for cross-reactions. Of these, 16 were identified that both strongly repress their cognate promoter (5- to 207-fold) and exhibit minimal interactions with other promoters. Each repressor-promoter pair was converted to a NOT gate and characterized. Used as a set of 16 NOT/NOR gates, there are >10[superscript 54] circuits that could be built by changing the pattern of input and output promoters. This represents a large set of compatible gates that can be used to construct user-defined circuits.