Reverse Engineering the Bacterial Cell's Control System

Harley McAdams Professor, Department of Developmental Biology, Stanford University School of Medicine

"Reverse Engineering the Bacterial Cell's Control System"

Abstract: The Caulobacter cell cycle is controlled by a closed loop control system of remarkable complexity. Analysis of cross-correlations between intergenic probes on a tiled microarray is a powerful complement to conventional microarray gene expression assays providing location of transcription start sites and identification of intergenic small regulatory RNAs. Modeling of the cell cycle control shows how asymmetric cell division is accomplished by the Caulobacter cell. Application of formal model checking methods adapted from digital circuit design shows that robustness of cell cycle operation to stochastic variations in reaction rates is provided by the circuit design and by DNA methylation-based transcriptional regulation mechanisms.