Team:HKUSTers

Our logo:The Bauhinia purpurea x variegata at the top-left corner is the floral emblem of Hong Kong; the red sundial on the left represents HKUST, as there is a large sundial in HKUST as a landmark; the Chinese brush style English letters reflect the cultural diversity of Hong Kong as a place where east meets west.

Abstract

Does God play dice with the cell?

Stochastic fluctuation in a cellular context and the lambda-phage bifurcation have been extensively studied. However, from a bottom-up synthetic aspect, we aim to exploit the cellular "noise" to build an E. coli version of a computational device, the "Random Number Generator". One random binary digit can be generated by capturing an initial Polymerase binding event with a pair of mutually exclusive promoters. Reciprocal inhibition using two repressors shall achieve >> unilateral expression of the "switch", with fluorescence reporters indicating the probability of each alternative occurrence. Balancing the two sets of affinity and kinetic parameters and maintaining a single copy of this synthetic device integrated into the bacterial chromosome shall improve performance. If successful, coupled with other reporters we envision multiple extensions of this "Randomizer", including a Memorizer that utilizes a hierarchy of XOR-alculations to "store" a multi-digit random number, and intriguing pattern generation involving chemical gradients and random "population behavior".