Algorithms for designing genetic circuits
EU Research Council funds project by TU Professor Heinz Koeppl with 150,000 euros
2022/05/30
TU Professor Heinz Koeppl (Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology) receives a “Proof of Concept” grant of 150,000 euros from the European Research Council (ERC) for the second time. The new grant will fund his project “PLATE – Biophysical Genetic Design Automation Technology”, which deals with algorithms for the computer-aided design of genetic circuits in synthetic biology.
Unlike in physics, the biological complexity of cellular processes still pushes mathematical modelling to its limits. Nevertheless, synthetic biology is nowadays able to find quantitative descriptions in the form of computer models for simple, self-contained biomolecular systems and to derive meaningful predictions from them. For a very limited set of well-characterised genetic elements, it is also possible to reliably simulate the interconnection of these elements on the computer. Professor Heinz Koeppl's PLATE project deals with algorithms that can automatically combine elements from a sequence and regulator library in a functional combination and characterise the behaviour of the resulting networks or circuits.