Synthetic ecosystems

Applications of Engineered Synthetic Ecosystems

A major goal in synthetic biology is to construct biological systems with robust and controllable behavior and functionality. Over recent decades, biologists have tried to deconvolve the complexity of life by elucidating key genetic and regulatory determinants, with the hope of eventually engineering biological systems in more predictable ways. Genetic circuits have now been designed and rewire...

Engineering ecosystems and synthetic ecologiesw

Environments that Induce Synthetic Microbial Ecosystems

Interactions between microbial species are sometimes mediated by the exchange of small molecules, secreted by one species and metabolized by another. Both one-way (commensal) and two-way (mutualistic) interactions may contribute to complex networks of interdependencies. Understanding these interactions constitutes an open challenge in microbial ecology, with applications ranging from the human ...

Synthetic ecosystems based on airborne inter- and intrakingdom communication.

Intercellular communication within an organism, between populations, or across species and kingdoms forms the basis of many ecosystems in which organisms coexist through symbiotic, parasitic, or predator-prey relationships. Using multistep airborne communication and signal transduction, we present synthetic ecosystems within a mammalian cell population, in mice, or across species and kingdoms. ...

An Analytic Approach to Pheromone-Based Coordination in Synthetic Ecosystems

The systematic application of the synthetic ecosystems approach to the design of multi-agent systems is supported by the use of a generic pheromone infrastructure as extension of the runtime environment of the software agents. Using this infrastructure, insect-like coordination mechanisms may be applied in software systems. This article proposes an analytic model for such a generic pheromone in...