Intracellularly coupled oscillators for synthetic biology.

Abstract

Synthetic biology aims to engineer or re-engineer living systems. To achieve increasingly complex functionalities, it is beneficial to use higher-level building blocks. In this study, we focus on oscillators as such building blocks, propose oscillator-based circuit designs and model the interactions of intracellularly coupled oscillators. We classify these oscillators on the basis of coupling strength: independent, weakly or strongly, and deeply coupled. We predict a wide range of dynamic behaviors to arise in these systems, such as the beat phenomenon, amplitude and frequency modulation, period doubling, higher-period oscillations, chaos, resonance, and synchronization, with the aim of guiding future experimental work in bacterial synthetic biology. Finally, we outline potential applications, including oscillator-based computing that integrates processing and memory functions, offering multistate and nonlinear processing capabilities.