Synchronized biochemical oscillations in multicellular synthetic clocks

Jordi Garcia-Ojalvo
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - ETSEIT
 

The collective behavior of a population of cells expressing synthetic biochemical rhythms is analyzed. Computational modeling shows that intercell coupling via quorum sensing is able to induce synchronized oscillations in the system, even when the cell population is substantially diverse and noisy.
These results suggest that coupling provides an additional mechanism of noise resistance in gene regulation systems.