Menolascina, Filippo (Telethon Institute for Genetics and Medicine), Di Bernardo, Mario (University Of Naples Federico II), di Bernardo, Diego (Telethon Institute of Genetics and Medicine)

Design and Implementation of a Feedback Control Strategy for IRMA, a Novel Synthetic Gene Regulatory Network

Scheduled for presentation during the Invited Session "Control Theory and Biology - Applications and Experimental Approaches" (WeC23), Wednesday, December 15, 2010, 16:40−17:00, Grand Salon A

49th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, December 15-17, 2010, Hilton Atlanta Hotel, Atlanta, GA, USA

This information is tentative and subject to change. Compiled on December 17, 2018

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the design, analysis and in-silico validation of a novel scheme to control gene regulatory networks. The idea is to use microfluidics to implement an innovative in-vivo feedback control scheme to make the concentrations of the network genes achieve some desired steady state reference signal. We propose to use as a benchmark problem the control of IRMA a novel synthetic regulatory network in S. Cerevisiae. After deriving an hybrid model of the network, we suggest the use of a PWM based scheme to control the amount of Galactose fed to the network. By appropriately switching the Galactose input we are able to achieve the desired control objective. The scheme is enhanced by the use of a Smith predictor and is implemented using a novel microfluidics device together with appropriate blocks to transduce the fluorescence levels measured by a sensitive microscope used to sense the gene concentrations of interest. In-silico simulations validate the approach presented showing its effectiveness. Preliminary experimental results are also shown confirming in-vivo the viability of the proposed approach.