Environmental signal integration by a modular AND gate

J Christopher Anderson, Christopher A Voigt and Adam P Arkin

Molecular Systems Biology (2007) 3:133

AND gate

INPUT OUTPUT

A B A AND B

0 0 0

0 1 0

1 0 0

1 1 1

Amber stop codon

Nonsense mutation = point mutation in DNA sequence resulting in premature stop codon or nonsense codon in transcribed mRNA -> truncated/non-functional protein product.

Supressor = tRNA that can “read” nonsense codon and cause appropriate amino acid to be incorporated into peptide sequence.

Functionality

Mathematical model

Modularity

Concluding remarks

Independent promoters detecting different aspects of the environment (O2, pH, cell density, lactate, glucose) could be integrated to sense a specific environment.