Descripción del proyecto
Una caja de herramientas de sistemas de control para acelerar la innovación en biología sintética
La naturaleza ha desarrollado mecanismos tremendamente diversos y eficaces para realizar todo tipo de tareas, y los mecanismos de control sobre estos mecanismos son igualmente diversos. Aunque la ingeniería de sistemas y procesos biológicos está proporcionando avances que mejoran la calidad de vida humana de forma sostenible, no se ha explotado todo su potencial debido, sobre todo, a los retos que plantea controlar artificialmente el comportamiento dinámico de estos sistemas biofísicos. El equipo del proyecto COSY-BIO, financiado con fondos europeos, pretende basarse en los principios de la ingeniería de control para desarrollar tres tipos distintos de «controladores»: externos (un ordenador), embebidos (integrados en las células) y multicelulares (poblaciones celulares separadas que controlan a otras células). Las herramientas irán acompañadas de una plataforma de prototipado rápido.
Objetivo
Synthetic Biology aims at rational engineering of living organisms to improve human well-being and environmental sustainability, thus promising a paradigm shift in human technology. Its full potential has not been achieved yet because of the complexity of engineering biological systems where basic biological parts are intrinsically noisy and not modular. The overarching goal of COSY-BIO is to develop a theoretical framework and innovative technological tools to engineer reliable biological systems that are robust despite their individual components being not by translating principles of control engineering to molecular and cell biology. Automatic control is a well-established engineering discipline to build “controllers” to steer the dynamic behaviour of a physical system in a desired fashion. By building upon control engineering for physical systems and by exploiting the unique features of living organisms, this project will identify generally applicable approaches to design closed-loop feedback controllers for biological systems. To handle biological complexity, the project will explore three strategies of increasing difficulty “external” controllers, “embedded” controllers and “multi-cellular” controllers. External controllers will be implemented in a computer acting on cells using small molecules via microfluidics devices. Embedded controllers will be made from biological parts and integrated within individual cells to steer their behaviour. Multicellular controllers envisage two cell populations, one made up of cells with embedded controllers (controller cells) and the other will be the controlled population (target cells). In addition, a rapid prototyping platform will enable to speed up the design-build-test cycles by means of optimal experimental design, microfluidics and cell-free systems. Proof-of-principles demonstrations in bacteria and yeast with relevance to biotechnology will be tackled to prove the usefulness of this revolutionary technology.
Ámbito científico
- natural sciencesphysical sciencesclassical mechanicsfluid mechanicsmicrofluidics
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiologybacteriology
- natural sciencesbiological sciencessynthetic biology
- natural sciencesbiological sciencescell biology
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringcontrol engineering
Programa(s)
Convocatoria de propuestas
Consulte otros proyectos de esta convocatoriaConvocatoria de subcontratación
H2020-FETOPEN-1-2016-2017
Régimen de financiación
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinador
00185 Roma
Italia