In silico design of synthetic gene network for control of gene expression

Abstract

We consider the problem of controlling gene expression. A synthetic gene network, namely genetic controller, is designed to maintain the concentration of a target protein to a reference level, marked by the concentration of another protein. This genetic controller is implemented using a genetic comparator and a genetic toggle switch. The introduced genetic controller is a bang-bang controller that switches between two states (low or high). The notion of input-to-state stability with respect to compact sets, is used to analyze the stability of the genetic controller. Also genetic algorithm is employed to optimize the genetic controller parameters.