Low-cost arabinose induced genetic circuit for protein production: Modeling

Abstract

AbstractA low-cost reagent-producing genetic circuit was designed during this work. Its functioning is based on a positive feedback loop induced by a small amount of arabinose, allowing users to obtain reactants in a safe, constant, and controlled manner. The “design only” approach to the project allows us to work in different kinds of computational models, thus, an ODE-based model was thoroughly developed and a cellular automata-based one was experimented with.Working on the ODE model, equilibrium states and system stability were studied. Circuit properties were also focused on one of which was a high concentration of interest protein produced by low inductor inputs. As a result, a mathematical expression capable of describing the quantity of produced reagent was obtained. In addition, the cellular automata model offers a new perspective, given its differences from the ODE model e.g. this type of model is a stochastic analysis and describes each cell individually instead of describing the whole cellular population.