BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN DESIGN AND REALITY A Dual Evolutionary Strategy for the Design of Synthetic Genetic Circuits

Computational design is essential to the field of synthetic biology, particularly as its practitioners become more ambitious, and system designs become larger and more complex. However, computational models derived from abstract designs are unlikely to behave in the same way as organisms engineered from those same designs. We propose an automated, iterative strategy involving evolution both in silico and in vivo, with feedback between strands as necessary, combined with automated reasoning. This system can help bridge the gap between the behaviour of computational models and that of engineered organisms in as rapid and cost-effective a manner as possible.