Designing and verifying molecular circuits made of DNA
Synthetic Biology Engineering Evolution Design SEED
2015
2015 Synthetic Biology: Engineering, Evolution & Design (SEED)
General Submissions
DNA and RNA Based Synthetic Biology
Friday, June 12, 2015 - 10:00am to 10:25am
Inspired by the information processing core of biological organisms and its ability to fabricate intricate machinery from the molecular scale up to the macroscopic scale, research in synthetic biology, molecular programming, and nucleic acid nanotechnology aims to create information-based chemical systems that carry out human-defined molecular programs that input, output, and manipulate molecules and molecular structures. For chemistry to become the next information technology substrate, we will need improved tools for designing, simulating, and analyzing complex molecular circuits and systems. Using dynamic DNA nanotechnology as a model system, I will discuss how programming languages can be devised for specifying molecular systems at a high level, how compilers can translate such specifications into concrete molecular implementations, how both high-level and low-level specifications can be simulated and verified, and how these techniques can be used to design, implement, and understand nucleic-acid circuits that exhibit specified non-equilibrium dynamics.