Team:WITS-CSIR SA/Project/Concept

One of the defining characteristics of humanity is the constantly evolving sophistication with which human beings communicate and store information: from the earliest cave drawings, smoke signals and tablet carvings, to the printing press, telephony, the Internet and future cloud computing. The recent advent of the Internet perfectly encapsulates this phenomenon of global interconnectedness - allowing for the worldwide communication between cultures, organisations and individuals, through a single data network entity.

Biologically, data communication networks exist too. The transfer of data occurs via signalling molecules incorporated into highly regulated and integrated networks. Our goal is to construct an automated bacterial communication network that will allow a group of genetically engineered bacteria to transport messages in a directed manner, with the final aim of completing location-based functional tasks. Such a biological network can be engineered to function in specific applications and assist in carrying out the tasks involved in the pipeline of a particular process, be it medical or industrial.

We have focused on one aspect of this network: the directed transport of the message-carrying “communication modules” within our biological network. These communication modules will take the form of bacteria, which can move over physical distances carrying information. The content of the message - designed to elicit a desired output - is, of course, vital to the eventual application. However, the successful delivery and transport of these messages to other effector bacteria - dictating the end-points of the data network - is of vital importance for proof of concept. Thus, we will attempt to engineer the exogenously controlled chemotactic behaviour of bacteria using synthetic riboswitches to regulate the expression of a protein required for bacterial motility. This will allow for their directed movement towards a desired location where they can deliver the message: a biological analogy to the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) of the Internet, which delivered the data to your computer allowing you to read this abstract.