Part:BBa_J102005

Biological Capacitor

This is a biological capacitor, where the output of the device is proportional to the temporal derivative of the concentration of the input. If one considers current to be PoPS, and voltage to be the concentration of the input molecule (where ground is 0M), this is analogous to an electrical capacitor. In this case, the input is anhydrotetracycline, and the output is GFP (with an LVA tag). A modular version of this device, where the user can define his or her own input and output, is also available (BBa_J102003).

The concentration of AHL, a small molecule which activates luxR, is used as a chemical dial to control the transcription rate from J102001. For the capacitor to display the desired behaviour, the promoters must be of approximately equal strength. The more AHL in the medium, the more transcription occurs from J102001, the reverse lux promoter. In order to tune the capacitor, grow bacteria containing the plasmid in media with different concentrations of AHL, and test for the desired behaviour.

Sequence and Features

Assembly Compatibility:

• 10
  COMPATIBLE WITH RFC[10]
• 12
  INCOMPATIBLE WITH RFC[12]

  Illegal NheI site found at 7
  Illegal NheI site found at 30
  
• 21
  COMPATIBLE WITH RFC[21]
• 23
  COMPATIBLE WITH RFC[23]
• 25
  COMPATIBLE WITH RFC[25]
• 1000
  INCOMPATIBLE WITH RFC[1000]

  Illegal BsaI.rc site found at 1615