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Control Engineering of Biological Systems for Reliable Synthetic Biology Applications

Description du projet

Une boîte à outils de systèmes de contrôle pour accélérer l’innovation en biologie synthétique

La nature a développé des mécanismes extrêmement divers et efficaces pour accomplir toutes sortes de tâches, et les mécanismes de contrôle de ces mécanismes sont tout aussi variés. Bien que l’ingénierie des systèmes et processus biologiques permette des avancées qui améliorent la qualité de vie humaine de manière durable, il reste des avenues à explorer, principalement en raison des difficultés liées au contrôle artificiel du comportement dynamique de ces systèmes biophysiques. Le projet COSY-BIO, financé par l’UE, entend s’appuyer sur les principes de l’ingénierie du contrôle pour mettre au point trois types différents de «contrôleurs»: externes (un ordinateur), intégrés (dans les cellules) et multicellulaires (des populations de cellules distinctes contrôlant d’autres cellules). Les outils seront accompagnés d’une plateforme de prototypage rapide.

Objectif

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.

Appel à propositions

H2020-FETOPEN-2016-2017

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Sous appel

H2020-FETOPEN-1-2016-2017

Coordinateur

FONDAZIONE TELETHON ETS
Contribution nette de l'UE
€ 555 875,00
Adresse
VIA VARESE 16/B
00185 Roma
Italie

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Région
Centro (IT) Lazio Roma
Type d’activité
Research Organisations
Liens
Coût total
€ 555 875,00

Participants (8)