Abstract. In this paper, we review an emerging engineering discipline to program cell behaviors by embedding synthetic gene networks that perform computation, communications, and signal processing. To accomplish this goal, we begin with a genetic component library and a biocircuit design methodology for assembling these components into compound circuits. The main challenge in biocircuit design lies in selecting well-matched genetic components that when coupled, reliably produce the desired behavior. We use simulation tools to guide circuit design, a process that consists of selecting the appropriate components and genetically modifying existing components until the desired behavior is achieved. In addition to such rational design, we also employ directed evolution to optimize genetic circuit behavior. Building on Nature’s fundamental principle of evolution, this unique process directs cells to mutate their own DNA until they find gene network configurations that exhibit the desired system characteristics. The integration of all the above capabilities in future synthetic gene networks will enable cells to perform sophisticated digital and analog computation, both as individual entities and as part of larger cell communities. This engineering discipline and its associated tools will advance the capabilities of genetic engineering, and allow us to harness cells for a myriad of applications not previously achievable.

Abstract. A highly desired part of the synthetic biology toolbox is an embedded chemical microcontroller, capable of autonomously following a logic program specified by a set of instructions, and interacting with its cellular environment. Strategies for incorporating logic in aqueous chemistry have focused primarily on implementing components, such as logic gates, that are composed into larger circuits, with each logic gate in the circuit corresponding to one or more molecular species. With this paradigm, designing and producing new molecular species is necessary to perform larger computations. An alternative approach begins by noticing that chemical systems on the small scale are fundamentally discrete and stochastic. In particular, the exact molecular counts of each molecular species present, is an intrinsically available form of information. This might appear to be a very weak form of information, perhaps quite difficult for computations to utilize. Indeed, it has been shown that error-free Turing universal computation is impossible in this setting. Nevertheless, we show a design of a chemical computer that achieves fast and reliable Turing-universal computation using molecular counts. Our scheme uses only a small number of different molecular species to do computation of arbitrary complexity. The total probability of error of the computation can be made arbitrarily small (but not zero) by adjusting the initial molecular counts of certain species. While physical implementations would be difficult, these results demonstrate that molecular counts can be a useful form of information for small molecular systems such as those operating within cellular environments. Key words. stochastic chemical kinetics; molecular counts; Turing-universal computation; probabilistic computation 1. Introduction. Many

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Abstract. The genetic network regulating the biosynthesis of subtilin in Bacillus subtilis is modeled as a stochastic hybrid system. The continuous state of the hybrid system is the concentrations of subtilin and various regulating proteins, whose productions are controlled by switches in the genetic network that are in turn modeled as Markov chains. Some preliminary results are given by both analysis and simulations. 1 Background of Subtilin Production In order to survive, bacteria develop a number of strategies to cope with harsh environmental conditions. One of the survival strategies employed by bacteria is the release of antibiotics to eliminate competing microbial species in the same ecosystem [15]. It is observed that the production of antibiotics in the cells is affected by not only the environmental stimuli (e.g. nutrient levels, aeration, etc.) but also the local population density of their own species [12]. Therefore, the physiological states of the cell and the external signals both contribute to the regulation of antibiotic synthesis. Our study focuses on the subtilin, an antibiotic

Abstract. A method is developed for incorporating diffusion of chemicals in complex geometries into stochastic chemical kinetics simulations. Systems are modeled using the reaction-diffusion master equation, with jump rates for diffusive motion between mesh cells calculated from the discretization weights of an embedded boundary method. Since diffusive jumps between cells are treated as first order reactions, individual realizations of the stochastic process can be created by the Gillespie method. Numerical convergence results for the underlying embedded boundary method, and for the stochastic reaction-diffusion method, are presented in two dimensions. A two-dimensional model of transcription, translation, and nuclear membrane transport in eukaryotic cells is presented to demonstrate the feasibility of the method in studying cell-wide biological processes.

The deterministic reaction rate equations are not an accurate description of many systems in molecular biology where the number of molecules of each species often is small. The master equation of chemical reactions is a more accurate stochastic description suitable for small molecular numbers. A computational difficulty is the high dimensionality of the equation. We describe how it can be solved by first approximating it by the Fokker-Planck equation. Then this equation is discretized in space and time by a finite difference method. The method is compared to a Monte Carlo method by Gillespie. The method is applied to a four-dimensional problem of interest in the regulation of cell processes. This paper was presented at the 19th GAMM-Seminar in Leipzig, January 23–25, 2003.

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Recent experimental studies elucidating the importance of noise in gene regulation [1], [2], [3], [4], [5] have ignited widespread interest in Gillespie’s stochastic simulation technique for biochemical networks. We formulate modifications to the Gillespie algorithm which are necessary to correctly simulate chemical reactions with time-dependent reaction rates. We concentrate on time dependence of kinetic rates arising from the periodic process of growth and division of the cellular volume, and demonstrate that a careful rederivation of the Gillespie algorithm is important when all stochastically simulated reactions have rates slower or comparable to the cellular growth rate. For an unregulated single-gene system, we illustrate our findings using recently proposed hybrid simulation techniques, and systematically compare our algorithm with analytic results obtained from the chemical Master Equation. I.

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Summary. Motivated by the intriguing complexity of biochemical circuitry within individual cells we study Stochastic Chemical Reaction Networks (SCRNs), a formal model that considers a set of chemical reactions acting on a finite number of molecules in a well-stirred solution according to standard chemical kinetics equations. SCRNs have been widely used for describing naturally occurring (bio)chemical systems, and with the advent of synthetic biology they become a promising language for the design of artificial biochemical circuits. Our interest here is the computational power of SCRNs and how they relate to more conventional models of computation. We survey known connections and give new connections between SCRNs and