Mar 2017, Volume 5 Issue 1
    

Cover illustration

  • The Yin and Yang of bacteria: the Chinese philosophical concept of Yin and Yang symbolizes how two opposing forces can harmoniously coincide. This particular Yin and Yang is made up of two types of bacteria, black and white, representing how competitive strains of bacteria can behave in paradoxically mutualistic ways. As Sadeghpour et al. show in this issue, if two strains of bacteria down-regulate transcription in one another, the resulting system can oscillate. As one strai [Detail] ...


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  • EDITORIAL
    Cheemeng Tan
  • REVIEW
    Krishna Choudhary, Fei Deng, Sharon Aviran

    Background: Structure profiling experiments provide single-nucleotide information on RNA structure. Recent advances in chemistry combined with application of high-throughput sequencing have enabled structure profiling at transcriptome scale and in living cells, creating unprecedented opportunities for RNA biology. Propelled by these experimental advances, massive data with ever-increasing diversity and complexity have been generated, which give rise to new challenges in interpreting and analyzing these data.

    Results: We review current practices in analysis of structure profiling data with emphasis on comparative and integrative analysis as well as highlight emerging questions. Comparative analysis has revealed structural patterns across transcriptomes and has become an integral component of recent profiling studies. Additionally, profiling data can be integrated into traditional structure prediction algorithms to improve prediction accuracy.

    Conclusions: To keep pace with experimental developments, methods to facilitate, enhance and refine such analyses are needed. Parallel advances in analysis methodology will complement profiling technologies and help them reach their full potential.

  • REVIEW
    Yijun Guo, Bing Wei, Shiyan Xiao, Dongbao Yao, Hui Li, Huaguo Xu, Tingjie Song, Xiang Li, Haojun Liang

    Background: The DNA strand displacement reaction, which uses flexible and programmable DNA molecules as reaction components, is the basis of dynamic DNA nanotechnology, and has been widely used in the design of complex autonomous behaviors.

    Results: In this review, we first briefly introduce the concept of toehold-mediated strand displacement reaction and its kinetics regulation in pure solution. Thereafter, we review the recent progresses in DNA complex circuit, the assembly of AuNPs driven by DNA molecular machines, and the detection of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) using DNA toehold exchange probes in pure solution and in interface state. Lastly, the applications of toehold-mediated strand displacement in the genetic regulation and silencing through combining gene circuit with RNA interference systems are reviewed.

    Conclusions: The toehold-mediated strand displacement reaction makes DNA an excellent material for the fabrication of molecular machines and complex circuit, and may potentially be used in the disease diagnosis and the regulation of gene silencing in the near future.

  • REVIEW
    Russell Brown, Andreas Lengeling, Baojun Wang

    Background: The therapeutic potential of bacteriophages has been debated since their first isolation and characterisation in the early 20th century. However, a lack of consistency in application and observed efficacy during their early use meant that upon the discovery of antibiotic compounds research in the field of phage therapy quickly slowed. The rise of antibiotic resistance in bacteria and improvements in our abilities to modify and manipulate DNA, especially in the context of small viral genomes, has led to a recent resurgence of interest in utilising phage as antimicrobial therapeutics.

    Results: In this article a number of results from the literature that have aimed to address key issues regarding the utility and efficacy of phage as antimicrobial therapeutics utilising molecular biology and synthetic biology approaches will be introduced and discussed, giving a general view of the recent progress in the field.

    Conclusions: Advances in molecular biology and synthetic biology have enabled rapid progress in the field of phage engineering, with this article highlighting a number of promising strategies developed to optimise phages for the treatment of bacterial disease. Whilst many of the same issues that have historically limited the use of phages as therapeutics still exist, these modifications, or combinations thereof, may form a basis upon which future advances can be built. A focus on rigorous in vivo testing and investment in clinical trials for promising candidate phages may be required for the field to truly mature, but there is renewed hope that the potential benefits of phage therapy may finally be realised.

  • RESEARCH ARTICLE
    Mehdi Sadeghpour, Alan Veliz-Cuba, Gábor Orosz, Krešimir Josić, Matthew R. Bennett

    Background: Synthetic microbial consortia are conglomerations of genetically engineered microbes programmed to cooperatively bring about population-level phenotypes. By coordinating their activity, the constituent strains can display emergent behaviors that are difficult to engineer into isogenic populations. To do so, strains are engineered to communicate with one another through intercellular signaling pathways that depend on cell density.

    Methods: Here, we used computational modeling to examine how the behavior of synthetic microbial consortia results from the interplay between population dynamics governed by cell growth and internal transcriptional dynamics governed by cell-cell signaling. Specifically, we examined a synthetic microbial consortium in which two strains each produce signals that down-regulate transcription in the other. Within a single strain this regulatory topology is called a “co-repressive toggle switch” and can lead to bistability.

    Results: We found that in co-repressive synthetic microbial consortia the existence and stability of different states depend on population-level dynamics. As the two strains passively compete for space within the colony, their relative fractions fluctuate and thus alter the strengths of intercellular signals. These fluctuations drive the consortium to alternative equilibria. Additionally, if the growth rates of the strains depend on their transcriptional states, an additional feedback loop is created that can generate oscillations.

    Conclusions: Our findings demonstrate that the dynamics of microbial consortia cannot be predicted from their regulatory topologies alone, but are also determined by interactions between the strains. Therefore, when designing synthetic microbial consortia that use intercellular signaling, one must account for growth variations caused by the production of protein.

  • RESEARCH ARTICLE
    Jingwen Guan, Xu Shi, Roberto Burgos, Lanying Zeng

    Background: The CRISPR-Cas system is a widespread prokaryotic defense system which targets and cleaves invasive nucleic acids, such as plasmids or viruses. So far, a great number of studies have focused on the components and mechanisms of this system, however, a direct visualization of CRISPR-Cas degrading invading DNA in real-time has not yet been studied at the single-cell level.

    Methods: In this study, we fluorescently label phage lambda DNA in vivo, and track the labeled DNA over time to characterize DNA degradation at the single-cell level.

    Results: At the bulk level, the lysogenization frequency of cells harboring CRISPR plasmids decreases significantly compared to cells with a non-CRISPR control. At the single-cell level, host cells with CRISPR activity are unperturbed by phage infection, maintaining normal growth like uninfected cells, where the efficiency of our anti-lambda CRISPR system is around 26%. During the course of time-lapse movies, the average fluorescence of invasive phage DNA in cells with CRISPR activity, decays more rapidly compared to cells without, and phage DNA is fully degraded by around 44 minutes on average. Moreover, the degradation appears to be independent of cell size or the phage DNA ejection site suggesting that Cas proteins are dispersed in sufficient quantities throughout the cell.

    Conclusions: With the CRISPR-Cas visualization system we developed, we are able to examine and characterize how a CRISPR system degrades invading phage DNA at the single-cell level. This work provides direct evidence and improves the current understanding on how CRISPR breaks down invading DNA.

  • RESEARCH ARTICLE
    Keith C. Heyde, MaryJoe K. Rice, Sung-Ho Paek, Felicia Y. Scott, Ruihua Zhang, Warren C. Ruder

    Background: The tools of synthetic biology have enabled researchers to explore multiple scientific phenomena by directly engineering signaling pathways within living cells and artificial protocells. Here, we explored the potential for engineered living cells themselves to assemble signaling pathways for non-living protocells. This analysis serves as a preliminary investigation into a potential origin of processes that may be utilized by complex living systems. Specifically, we suggest that if living cells can be engineered to direct the assembly of genetic signaling pathways from genetic biomaterials in their environment, then insight can be gained into how naturally occurring living systems might behave similarly.

    Methods: To this end, we have modeled and simulated a system consisting of engineered cells that control the assembly of DNA monomers on microparticle scaffolds. These DNA monomers encode genetic circuits, and therefore, these microparticles can then be encapsulated with minimal transcription and translation systems to direct protocell phenotype. The modeled system relies on multiple previously established synthetic systems and then links these together to demonstrate system feasibility.

    Results: In this specific model, engineered cells are induced to synthesize biotin, which competes with biotinylated, circuit-encoding DNA monomers for an avidinized-microparticle scaffold. We demonstrate that multiple synthetic motifs can be controlled in this way and can be tuned by manipulating parameters such as inducer and DNA concentrations.

    Conclusions: We expect that this system will provide insight into the origin of living systems as well as serve as a tool for engineering living cells that assemble complex biomaterials in their environment.

  • RESEARCH ARTICLE
    Hailin Meng, Yingfei Ma, Guoqin Mai, Yong Wang, Chenli Liu

    Background: The prediction of the prokaryotic promoter strength based on its sequence is of great importance not only in the fundamental research of life sciences but also in the applied aspect of synthetic biology. Much advance has been made to build quantitative models for strength prediction, especially the introduction of machine learning methods such as artificial neural network (ANN) has significantly improve the prediction accuracy. As one of the most important machine learning methods, support vector machine (SVM) is more powerful to learn knowledge from small sample dataset and thus supposed to work in this problem.

    Methods: To confirm this, we constructed SVM based models to quantitatively predict the promoter strength. A library of 100 promoter sequences and strength values was randomly divided into two datasets, including a training set (≥10 sequences) for model training and a test set (≥10 sequences) for model test.

    Results: The results indicate that the prediction performance increases with an increase of the size of training set, and the best performance was achieved at the size of 90 sequences. After optimization of the model parameters, a high-performance model was finally trained, with a high squared correlation coefficient for fitting the training set (R2>0.99) and the test set (R2>0.98), both of which are better than that of ANN obtained by our previous work.

    Conclusions: Our results demonstrate the SVM-based models can be employed for the quantitative prediction of promoter strength.

  • RESEARCH ARTICLE
    Weizhong Tu, Shaozhen Ding, Ling Wu, Zhe Deng, Hui Zhu, Xiaotong Xu, Chen Lin, Chaonan Ye, Minlu Han, Mengna Zhao, Juan Liu, Zixin Deng, Junni Chen, Dong-Qing Wei, Qian-Nan Hu

    Background: A comprehensive metabolism network of engineered E. coli is very important in systems biology and metabolomics studies. Many tools focus on two-dimensional space to display pathways in metabolic network. However, the usage of three-dimensional visualization may help to understand better the intricate topology of metabolic and regulatory networks.

    Methods: We manually curated large amount of experimental data (including pathways, reactions and metabolites) from literature related with different types of engineered E. coli and then utilized a novel technology of three dimensional visualization to develop a comprehensive metabolic network named SynBioEcoli.

    Results: SynBioEoli contains 740 biosynthetic pathways, 3,889 metabolic reactions, 2,255 chemical compoundsmanually curated from about 11,000 metabolism publications related with different types of engineered E. coli. Furthermore, SynBioEcoli integrates with various informatics techniques.

    Conclusions: SynBioEcoli could be regarded as a comprehensive knowledgebase of engineered E. coli and represents the next generation cellular metabolism network visualization technology. It could be accessed via web browsers (such as Google Chrome) supporting WebGL, at http://www.rxnfinder.org/synbioecoli/.

  • NEWS AND VIEWS
    Junbiao Dai,Yizhi Cai,Yinjing Yuan,Huanming Yang,Jef D. Boeke