Descrizione del progetto
Un set di sistemi di controllo per accelerare l’innovazione della biologia sintetica
La natura ha sviluppato meccanismi estremamente vari ed efficienti per svolgere ogni tipo di compito, e i meccanismi di controllo su di essi sono altrettanto vari. Sebbene l’ingegneria dei sistemi e dei processi biologici stia fornendo progressi che migliorano la qualità della vita umana in modo sostenibile, non ne sono state sfruttate tutte le potenzialità soprattutto a causa delle difficoltà nel controllare artificialmente il comportamento dinamico di questi sistemi biofisici. Il progetto COSY-BIO, finanziato dall’UE, si propone di basarsi sui principi dell’ingegneria di controllo per sviluppare tre diversi tipi di «controllori»: esterni (un computer), incorporati (integrati nelle cellule) e multicellulari (popolazioni cellulari separate che controllano altre cellule). Gli strumenti saranno accompagnati da una piattaforma di prototipazione rapida.
Obiettivo
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.
Campo scientifico
- 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
Programma(i)
Invito a presentare proposte
Vedi altri progetti per questo bandoBando secondario
H2020-FETOPEN-1-2016-2017
Meccanismo di finanziamento
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinatore
00185 Roma
Italia