Research

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Synthetic Biology underpins advances in the bioeconomy

Biological systems - including the simplest cells - exhibit a broad range of functions to thrive in their environment. Research in the Imperial College Centre for Synthetic Biology is focused on the possibility of engineering the underlying biochemical processes to solve many of the challenges facing society, from healthcare to sustainable energy. In particular, we model, analyse, design and build biological and biochemical systems in living cells and/or in cell extracts, both exploring and enhancing the engineering potential of biology. 

As part of our research we develop novel methods to accelerate the celebrated Design-Build-Test-Learn synthetic biology cycle. As such research in the Centre for Synthetic Biology highly multi- and interdisciplinary covering computational modelling and machine learning approaches; automated platform development and genetic circuit engineering ; multi-cellular and multi-organismal interactions, including gene drive and genome engineering; metabolic engineering; in vitro/cell-free synthetic biology; engineered phages and directed evolution; and biomimetics, biomaterials and biological engineering.

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Qureshi:2023:10.1063/5.0133489,
author = {Qureshi, BJ and Juritz, J and Poulton, JM and Beersing-Vasquez, A and Ouldridge, TE},
doi = {10.1063/5.0133489},
journal = {Journal of Chemical Physics},
pages = {1--22},
title = {A universal method for analyzing copolymer growth},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/5.0133489},
volume = {158},
year = {2023}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - Polymers consisting of more than one type of monomer, known as copolymers,are vital to both living and synthetic systems. Copolymerisation has beenstudied theoretically in a number of contexts, often by considering a Markovprocess in which monomers are added or removed from the growing tip of a longcopolymer. To date, the analysis of the most general models of this class hasnecessitated simulation. We present a general method for analysing suchprocesses without resorting to simulation. Our method can be applied to modelswith an arbitrary network of sub-steps prior to addition or removal of amonomer, including non-equilibrium kinetic proofreading cycles. Moreover, theapproach allows for a dependency of addition and removal reactions on theneighbouring site in the copolymer, and thermodynamically self-consistentmodels in which all steps are assumed to be microscopically reversible. Usingour approach, thermodynamic quantities such as chemical work; kineticquantities such as time taken to grow; and statistical quantities such as thedistribution of monomer types in the growing copolymer can be derived eitheranalytically or numerically directly from the model definition.
AU  - Qureshi,BJ
AU  - Juritz,J
AU  - Poulton,JM
AU  - Beersing-Vasquez,A
AU  - Ouldridge,TE
DO  - 10.1063/5.0133489
EP  - 22
PY  - 2023///
SN  - 0021-9606
SP  - 1
TI  - A universal method for analyzing copolymer growth
T2  - Journal of Chemical Physics
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/5.0133489
UR  - http://arxiv.org/abs/2211.02498v2
UR  - https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0133489
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/103245
VL  - 158
ER  -
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