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Abstract

Cells sense the environment, process information, and make response to the stimuli. To make cells work well in the complex natural environments, lots of processes have to be preset to react to various signals. However, when well-characterized modules are combined to construct higher order systems, unpredictable behaviors often occur because of the interplay of the modules. Another significant problem is that complex integrated systems composed of numerous parts may cause cell overload.

We propose an elegant method to design higher order systems. Instead of merely combining different functional modules, we construct one integrated processing module by utilizing the same structures between modules. The circuit we design is a rewirable one, the topological structure of the processing module can be altered to adapt to environmental change. The basic idea is to rewire the connections between parts and devices under the site-specific recombination system.

Based on the design principle we put forward, we build two circuits to verify our idea respectively. Each circuit has three modules including an input module, a processing module, and an output module. The input module is to receive environmental signal and trigger the rewiring of the processing module. The output module is to monitor real-time processes using fluorescence intensity.

Our design approach may lead to a revolutionary step towards system integration in synthetic biology. Potential fields of application include organism development, living therapeutics and environment improvement.