Team:Czech Republic/Practices/Lecture
Lecture
Contents
Motivation
Since a lot of ideas behind IODs were built on the fundamentals of classical engineering, we wanted to introduce the concept of our project (from an engineering point-of-view) to young engineers and receive their feedback. We presented our project and synthetic biology in general at a lecture of the Introduction to Cybernetics class led by Prof. Ing. Miloš Schlegel CSc. After giving a 30-minute lecture on synthetic biology, we introduced our project. The response was surprisingly positive. Not only we were asked several to-the-point questions, but some of the students also showed a deeper interest in synthetic biology and individually contacted us after the talk.
Lecture
Engineers design systems composed of simple components in order to ensure modularity. Modularity of system is huge advantage for its use. Sensor of input signal can be replaced to measure different quantity. Same procedure can be done with almost every component. Diploid IODs emerge of two haploids. Thus, their user can conduct many different combinations of sensors (receptors) and output signals (pheromones or yeast display). Another modularity is ensured by communication among all IODs.
One of the main goals of cybernetics is to describe a system, control it, and be able to know the reaction of this system after a concrete input signal. This reaction may be in the form of an output signal that can be measured and may influence another system. IODs are an excellent example of such modular system. Pheromone represents the input signal, and the output signals are yeast display surface receptors and another pheromone, which is also the input signal for another IOD system.
Engineers often use graphical block diagramming tools to make the functionality of a system transparent. Block models simplify the work on a system description. It is not necessary to describe a system with difficult differential equations and recurrence relations. We used these diagrams for graphical representation of IODs. This approach made our project more clear to engineers non-biologists.
Acknowledgement
Prof. Ing. Miloš Schlegel CSc