Principal Investigator Domitilla Del Vecchio
To modularly design biomolecular circuits, retroactivity must be counteracted. To this end, we have proposed to place insulation devices between an upstream system sending the signal and a downstream system receiving the signal to buffer them from retroactivity effects. An insulation device is designed to act like an isolation amplifier: it has almost zero retroactivity to the input and almost completely attenuates the retroactivity to the output. We are designing these molecular devices based on control-theoretic notions of disturbance attenuation and we have been identifying naturally occurring signaling modules that can implement this new isolation function: covalent modification cycles. Our work is both theoretical and experimental as we build our designs in E coli cells.