Team:UQ-Australia/Modeling

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Revision as of 04:54, 17 September 2011

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At the completion of the experimental work, we should expect a working clock BioBrick, which should exhibit oscillatory behaviour. We wish to characterise how our clock BioBrick oscillates. Of interest is the frequency and regularity at which it oscillates and whether multiple cells containing our BioBrick oscillate in time with each other.
The modelling will involve the mathematical characterisation of the kinetics and synchronisation of the oscillation of our bacteria. The kinetics involve modelling how fast our bacteria cells will oscillate and the shape of their oscillation pattern. The synchronisation is to characterise how quickly nearby cells would couple any synchronise their oscillation.
To give a rough idea of how our cells should be oscillating, mathematical models were described from literature. These would ideally be compared with experimental characterisation of the oscillation.

Kinetics

The BioBrick circuit has been represented as a network in a figure yet to be uploaded. For every reaction indicated in imaginary figure, we have assumed a first order reaction rate. The reaction constants have been taken from literature. From this, we would then have a system of first order linear ordinary differential equations. This should be solvable and thus give us a prediction as to the nature of the oscillatory behaviour of a cell. To test the appropriateness of this model, we would then experimentally measure the expression of arbitrary protein and see how close it fits.

Synchronisation

Many expressions in language rely on the idea of time. Here, we shall take a journey through time, from the idea of clock synchronisation, first shown about 400 years ago by Christiaan Huygens, to the recent observations of this synchronisation phenomenon in nature. Currently, an understanding of this process is currently being carried out at the genetic level. A union of physical modelling with mathematical theory and biological experimentation is leading to a deeper understanding of synchronisation in all disciplines, but particularly in the biological sciences.

Read the full synchronisation discussion here!

Microscopy

Many teams have been using microscopy during their experiments. Although these (thankfully!) may not directly be any of the submitted BioBricks, microscopy has become important in experimental biology. Here we shall investigate the behaviour of light within confocal and two-photon microscopy. By taking established theory describing the behaviour of focused light in three dimensions, we show through computer simulation that the resolution achieved in confocal and two-photon microscopy is dependent on the wavelength of light involved. Although this does not directly contribute towards a new BioBrick part (yet), we hope this investigation settles any curiosities regarding focused light in microscopes and perhaps inspires iGEMers to further consider the inner working of the apparatus on which they can depend quite heavily.