Why use Chromatin as a Tool for Synthetic Biology?
Transcriptional activators and repressors, the mainstays of current synthetic genetic circuits, work at the level of the promoter by affecting the recruitment of the basal transcription machinery. The eukaryotic cell, however, has a more potent mechanism to regulate gene expression: chromatin (gene silencing). Chromatin-based gene regulation has a number of interesting properties in vivo. We reasoned that it might be a powerful tool for synthetic biology. To explore this potential, we spent the summer developing a synthetic chromatin system, and demonstrating its unique features . Analysis of our Data Single-cell analysis was done using flow-cytometry. Example cells positive for GFP are seen in the microscope images on the lower right panel and their predicted population distribution is shown in the green curve in the ficticious graph in the left (below). The Properties of Our Synthetic Chromatin Bit We tested our synthetic chromatin bit in a number of ways. 1. Targeting of Sir2 Leads
