Project description FET Proactive: Evolving Living Technologies (EVLIT) Show the project objective Hide the project objective Conjugation is a natural communication mechanism used by plasmids (autonomous self- replicating DNA molecules) to travel from bacteria to bacteria as a survival strategy. The genes and proteins that control conjugation are well known by biologists. This conjugation hardware is highly specific and robust and has been refined over millions of years of natural selection. It allows the independent transmission of different conjugative plasmids without interference even when the plasmids share the same sender or receiver bacteria.We will harness this sophisticated and exquisite biological hardware to engineer a new multicellular communication technology where plasmids will be used as intercellular wires. Among others, during PLASWIRES project we will engineer large multicellular circuits such as a multi-layered AND gate circuit with 5 inputs, or an AND-OR and OR-AND Boolean logic circuit with up to 6 inputs.To simplify the design and implementation of conjugation based circuits we will engineer a multicellular programmable logic array (PLA). To show the power of this cell-cell communication technology, we will solve an NP-complete problem in-vivo: the SAT problem. To solve this problem is interesting not only theoretically, but also in practice: our plasmids solving SAT can potentially be used as programmable antibiotics or sentinel plasmids able to detect danger sets of plasmids in virulent bacteria. PLASWIRES will also develop software (CellModeller and BactoSIM will be the simulators used) to help biologists in the design of all these multicellular circuits.PLASWIRES' ultimate goal is to establish conjugation as a new tool in synthetic biology, which has not previously been exploited, to engineer multicellular circuits with potential applications in biomedicine and biotechnology. From a computational standpoint, PLASWIRES aims to demonstrate that conjugative plasmids are programmable wires enabling distributed bacterial computations. In other words: PLASWIRES' main goal is to show how to program a parallel distributed living computer using conjugative plasmids as wires between cellular processors. Fields of science natural sciencescomputer and information sciencessoftwarenatural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiologybacteriologynatural sciencesbiological sciencessynthetic biologynatural sciencesbiological sciencesgeneticsDNAnatural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistrybiomoleculesproteins Programme(s) FP7-ICT - Specific Programme "Cooperation": Information and communication technologies Topic(s) ICT-2013.9.6 - FET Proactive: Evolving Living Technologies (EVLIT) Call for proposal FP7-ICT-2013-10 See other projects for this call Funding Scheme CP - Collaborative project (generic) Coordinator UNIVERSIDAD POLITECNICA DE MADRID EU contribution € 570 600,00 Address CALLE RAMIRO DE MAEZTU 7 EDIFICIO RECTORADO 28040 Madrid Spain See on map Region Comunidad de Madrid Comunidad de Madrid Madrid Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Administrative Contact Roberto Prieto (Prof.) Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Total cost No data Participants (3) Sort alphabetically Sort by EU Contribution Expand all Collapse all UNIVERSIDAD DE CANTABRIA Spain EU contribution € 571 598,00 Address AVENIDA DE LOS CASTROS S/N 39005 Santander See on map Region Noroeste Cantabria Cantabria Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Administrative Contact Juan José San Miguel Roncero (Mr.) Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Total cost No data INSTITUT PASTEUR France EU contribution € 428 600,00 Address RUE DU DOCTEUR ROUX 25-28 75724 Paris See on map Region Ile-de-France Ile-de-France Paris Activity type Research Organisations Administrative Contact Marie-Laure ROSSO (Dr.) Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Total cost No data THE CHANCELLOR MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE United Kingdom EU contribution € 444 200,00 Address TRINITY LANE THE OLD SCHOOLS CB2 1TN Cambridge See on map Region East of England East Anglia Cambridgeshire CC Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Administrative Contact Renata Schaeffer (Ms.) Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Total cost No data