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Published July 8, 2011 | Accepted Version
Journal Article Open

Building Enhancers from the Ground Up: A Synthetic Biology Approach

Abstract

A challenge of the synthetic biology approach is to use our understanding of a system to recreate a biological function with specific properties. We have applied this framework to bacterial enhancers, combining a driver, transcription factor binding sites, and a poised polymerase to create synthetic modular enhancers. Our findings suggest that enhancer-based transcriptional control depends critically and quantitatively on DNA looping, leading to complex regulatory effects when the enhancer cassettes contain additional transcription factor binding sites for TetR, a bacterial transcription factor. We show through a systematic interplay of experiment and thermodynamic modeling that the level of gene expression can be modulated to convert a variable inducer concentration input into discrete or step-like output expression levels. Finally, using a different DNA-binding protein (TraR), we show that the regulatory output is not a particular feature of the specific DNA-binding protein used for the enhancer but a general property of synthetic bacterial enhancers.

Additional Information

© 2011 Elsevier Inc. Received 24 August 2010; revised 25 January 2011; accepted 14 June 2011. Published: July 7, 2011. Available online 7 July 2011. We would especially like to thank Prof. Frances H. Arnold for providing lab space and the forum to conduct thorough discussions as this project was evolving. We would also like to thank Eric H. Davidson for important early discussions and Alex J. Ninfa for plasmids and strains. R.A. was supported by a NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein fellowship, a Caltech CBCD grant, and the NIH through award NIH ARRA R01 GM085286-01S. R.P. and H.G.G. gratefully acknowledge awards NIH ARRA R01 GM085286-01S, R01 GM085286, and the NIH Director's PIONEER Award DP1 OD000217.

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