Mechanistic Models of Inducible Synthetic Circuits for Joint Description of DNA Copy Number, Regulatory Protein Level, and Cell Load
Accurate predictive mathematical models are urgently needed in synthetic biology to support the bottom-up design of complex biological systems, minimizing trial-and-error approaches. The majority of models used so far adopt empirical Hill functions to describe activation and repression in exogenousl...
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doaj-41737c293497420c9fe159c7c7ac291f2020-11-25T01:18:25ZengMDPI AGProcesses2227-97172019-02-017311910.3390/pr7030119pr7030119Mechanistic Models of Inducible Synthetic Circuits for Joint Description of DNA Copy Number, Regulatory Protein Level, and Cell LoadLorenzo Pasotti0Massimo Bellato1Davide De Marchi2Paolo Magni3Laboratory of Bioinformatics, Mathematical Modelling and Synthetic Biology, Department of Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering, University of Pavia, I-27100 Pavia, ItalyLaboratory of Bioinformatics, Mathematical Modelling and Synthetic Biology, Department of Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering, University of Pavia, I-27100 Pavia, ItalyLaboratory of Bioinformatics, Mathematical Modelling and Synthetic Biology, Department of Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering, University of Pavia, I-27100 Pavia, ItalyLaboratory of Bioinformatics, Mathematical Modelling and Synthetic Biology, Department of Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering, University of Pavia, I-27100 Pavia, ItalyAccurate predictive mathematical models are urgently needed in synthetic biology to support the bottom-up design of complex biological systems, minimizing trial-and-error approaches. The majority of models used so far adopt empirical Hill functions to describe activation and repression in exogenously-controlled inducible promoter systems. However, such equations may be poorly predictive in practical situations that are typical in bottom-up design, including changes in promoter copy number, regulatory protein level, and cell load. In this work, we derived novel mechanistic steady-state models of the lux inducible system, used as case study, relying on different assumptions on regulatory protein (LuxR) and cognate promoter (P<sub>lux</sub>) concentrations, inducer-protein complex formation, and resource usage limitation. We demonstrated that a change in the considered model assumptions can significantly affect circuit output, and preliminary experimental data are in accordance with the simulated activation curves. We finally showed that the models are identifiable a priori (in the analytically tractable cases) and a posteriori, and we determined the specific experiments needed to parametrize them. Although a larger-scale experimental validation is required, in the future the reported models may support synthetic circuits output prediction in practical situations with unprecedented details.https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9717/7/3/119mathematical modelingmechanistic modelsynthetic biologycopy numberinducible promotercell loadbottom-up design |
collection |
DOAJ |
language |
English |
format |
Article |
sources |
DOAJ |
author |
Lorenzo Pasotti Massimo Bellato Davide De Marchi Paolo Magni |
spellingShingle |
Lorenzo Pasotti Massimo Bellato Davide De Marchi Paolo Magni Mechanistic Models of Inducible Synthetic Circuits for Joint Description of DNA Copy Number, Regulatory Protein Level, and Cell Load Processes mathematical modeling mechanistic model synthetic biology copy number inducible promoter cell load bottom-up design |
author_facet |
Lorenzo Pasotti Massimo Bellato Davide De Marchi Paolo Magni |
author_sort |
Lorenzo Pasotti |
title |
Mechanistic Models of Inducible Synthetic Circuits for Joint Description of DNA Copy Number, Regulatory Protein Level, and Cell Load |
title_short |
Mechanistic Models of Inducible Synthetic Circuits for Joint Description of DNA Copy Number, Regulatory Protein Level, and Cell Load |
title_full |
Mechanistic Models of Inducible Synthetic Circuits for Joint Description of DNA Copy Number, Regulatory Protein Level, and Cell Load |
title_fullStr |
Mechanistic Models of Inducible Synthetic Circuits for Joint Description of DNA Copy Number, Regulatory Protein Level, and Cell Load |
title_full_unstemmed |
Mechanistic Models of Inducible Synthetic Circuits for Joint Description of DNA Copy Number, Regulatory Protein Level, and Cell Load |
title_sort |
mechanistic models of inducible synthetic circuits for joint description of dna copy number, regulatory protein level, and cell load |
publisher |
MDPI AG |
series |
Processes |
issn |
2227-9717 |
publishDate |
2019-02-01 |
description |
Accurate predictive mathematical models are urgently needed in synthetic biology to support the bottom-up design of complex biological systems, minimizing trial-and-error approaches. The majority of models used so far adopt empirical Hill functions to describe activation and repression in exogenously-controlled inducible promoter systems. However, such equations may be poorly predictive in practical situations that are typical in bottom-up design, including changes in promoter copy number, regulatory protein level, and cell load. In this work, we derived novel mechanistic steady-state models of the lux inducible system, used as case study, relying on different assumptions on regulatory protein (LuxR) and cognate promoter (P<sub>lux</sub>) concentrations, inducer-protein complex formation, and resource usage limitation. We demonstrated that a change in the considered model assumptions can significantly affect circuit output, and preliminary experimental data are in accordance with the simulated activation curves. We finally showed that the models are identifiable a priori (in the analytically tractable cases) and a posteriori, and we determined the specific experiments needed to parametrize them. Although a larger-scale experimental validation is required, in the future the reported models may support synthetic circuits output prediction in practical situations with unprecedented details. |
topic |
mathematical modeling mechanistic model synthetic biology copy number inducible promoter cell load bottom-up design |
url |
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9717/7/3/119 |
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