| The human circadian rhythm drives many important processes in the body in accordance with the sleep/wake cycle. A characteristic of this biological clock is the periodic oscillation of gene expression. Current parts in the Registry designed to regulate periodic oscillations of gene expression have shown limited success.
Here we demonstrate a biological clock being standardised as a set of BioBrick parts. Our network is controlled by an engineered promoter, Plac/ara, which features both an activator and a repressor domain. This controls the production of downstream genes to activate other inducible promoters, pBAD and GlnAp2, eventually leading to the production of a repressor protein, lacI, which inhibits Plac/ara, resulting in oscillatory expression. This project shows the feasibility of standardising the biological clock in E. coli and grounds further development for applications in regulated drug/hormone delivery and ion channel control. | 
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The project has been split into categories:
Together, this forms the UQ-Australia project for the 2011 iGEM.
In humans, the circadian rhythm is controlled by several core genes that operate via a series of feedback loops (Figure 1). A transcription–translation negative-feedback loop powers the system, with a delay between the transcription of these genes and the negative feedback being a key factor that allows the system to oscillate [1]
Figure 1: The gene network responsible for establishing the circadian rhythm in humans [1]
Details of this is on the Modelling page.
Details of this is on the Safety page.
The Human Practices section is on the Human Practices
[1] Gallego, M & Virshup, DM 2007. "Post-translational modifications regulate the ticking of the circadian clock", Molecular Cell Biology, vol. 8, pp. 139-148.
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