Abstract

BackgroundRhythmic clock widely occurs in biological systems which controls several aspects of cell physiology. For the different cell types, it is supplied with various rhythmic frequencies. How to synthesize a specific clock signal is a preliminary but a necessary step to further development of a biological computer in the future.ResultsThis paper presents a genetic sequential logic circuit with a clock pulse generator based on a synthesized genetic oscillator, which generates a consecutive clock signal whose frequency is an inverse integer multiple to that of the genetic oscillator. An analogous electronic waveform-shaping circuit is constructed by a series of genetic buffers to shape logic high/low levels of an oscillation input in a basic sinusoidal cycle and generate a pulse-width-modulated (PWM) output with various duty cycles. By controlling the threshold level of the genetic buffer, a genetic clock pulse signal with its frequency consistent to the genetic oscillator is synthesized. A synchronous genetic counter circuit based on the topology of the digital sequential logic circuit is triggered by the clock pulse to synthesize the clock signal with an inverse multiple frequency to the genetic oscillator. The function acts like a frequency divider in electronic circuits which plays a key role in the sequential logic circuit with specific operational frequency.ConclusionsA cascaded genetic logic circuit generating clock pulse signals is proposed. Based on analogous implement of digital sequential logic circuits, genetic sequential logic circuits can be constructed by the proposed approach to generate various clock signals from an oscillation signal.

Highlights

  • Rhythmic clock widely occurs in biological systems which controls several aspects of cell physiology

  • Synthetic biology is an emerging interdisciplinary research field, which concentrates on understanding the behaviors of biological system from system-level as well as creating an artificial genetic circuit based on the principles of systems biology, mathematics and engineering [1,2,3,4]

  • Different from the genetic counter circuit design [25,29], we introduce a generalized form based on the topology of digital logic circuits for synthesizing a clock signal with an inverse multiple of clock frequency to the genetic oscillator

Read more

Summary

Introduction

Rhythmic clock widely occurs in biological systems which controls several aspects of cell physiology. Analogous to an electronic circuit, the synthetic genetic circuit includes some standard biological components to assemble the biochemical process of living organisms and achieve specific functionality. By using mathematical models to capture the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of biological systems, the customized genetic circuits with specific functions can be designed from the system perspective [5,6,7,8]. For drug development and disease treatment, synthetic biology brings a useful and rapid direction through inserting the designed genetic circuits into the host cells to improve or modify the disease state of organisms. There are still potential applications in biofuels, biotechnology, bioremediation, and bioenergy remained to be developed

Methods
Results
Discussion
Conclusion
Full Text
Published version (Free)

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call