Engineering logic gates using synthetic SIRNAs in escherichia coli for gene silencing

• Main Author: Lim, Carol Yi Ting
• Other Authors: School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Bioengineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/60836
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Synthetic small interfering RNAs have generated large interest in both basic and applied biology due to their ability to knock down and silence the gene of interest. At the same time it also serves as a requisite tool to study genetic function in cells. To date, very little literature has been found which comprehensively incorporating siRNAs into all 16 logic gates hence the author aim to fill in this gap of information by introducing a new molecular mechanism to construct the siRNA based logic circuits. With this new molecular mechanism one can easily transpose 8 logic circuits to full 16 logic circuits as siRNA serves as a NOT gate and is also a strong repressor which has the ability to silent a particular gene in the circuit. The output of the logic circuit would also be much cleaner and more informative without any unwanted noise as siRNA control the translation level. The use of bioinformatic tools help to calculate the binding energy of the siRNA which gives a theoretical basis to evaluate the output efficiency of logic gates before doing the actual experiment. Additionally, mathematical modelling was done and the predicted responses of mathematical models were achieved. The results proved that not only siRNA has the ability to function in all 16 logic gates but also it was through mathematical modelling, it aid in the understanding of the designed siRNA based logic circuit so that fine tuning could be done when necessary.