Entrainment of a Population of Synthetic Genetic Oscillators

• Published in: Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Vol. 333; no. 6047; pp. 1315 - 1319
• Main Authors: Mondragón-Palomino, Octavio, Danino, Tal, Selimkhanov, Jangir, Tsimring, Lev, Hasty, Jeff
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC American Association for the Advancement of Science 02.09.2011; The American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Subjects: Arabinose - metabolism; Bacteria; Biochemistry; Biological and medical sciences; Biological clocks; Biological Clocks - genetics; Biological Clocks - physiology; Cells; Computer applications; Computer Simulation; Determinism; Escherichia coli - genetics; Feedback (Response); Feedback, Physiological; Fluorescence; Forced vibration; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Gene Regulatory Networks; General aspects; Genes; Genes, araC; Green Fluorescent Proteins; Lac Repressors - genetics; Mathematical Models; Mathematics in biology. Statistical analysis. Models. Metrology. Data processing in biology (general aspects); Microfluidic Analytical Techniques; Modeling; Models, Biological; Molecular and cellular biology; Oscillators; Parametric models; Population genetics; Probability distributions; Single-Cell Analysis; Stochastic models; Synthetic Biology - methods; Biological clock; Fluid mechanics; Computer simulation; Oscillator; Synthetic biology; Modeling; Microfluidics
• ISSN: 0036-8075; 1095-9203
• DOI: 10.1126/science.1205369

Biological clocks are self-sustained oscillators that adjust their phase to the daily environmental cycles in a process known as entrainment. Molecular dissection and mathematical modeling of biological oscillators have progressed quite far, but quantitative insights on the entrainment of clocks are relatively sparse. We simultaneously tracked the phases of hundreds of synthetic genetic oscillators relative to a common external stimulus to map the entrainment regions predicted by a detailed model of the clock. Synthetic oscillators were frequency-locked in wide intervals of the external period and showed higher-order resonance. Computational simulations indicated that natural oscillators may contain a positive-feedback loop to robustly adapt to environmental cycles.