Design and quantification of a tissue type specific genetic circuit in plants

2020 Spring.Includes bibliographical references.Synthetic biologists aim to rationally design genetic circuits and utilize plant platforms to photosynthetically drive, self-sustainable circuits. Although plants are excellent platforms, issues and unpredictability arise from the innate complexity of multicellularity. The ability to quantitatively control gene expression within specific cell types can address some issues arising from multicellularity. In my research, I developed a genetic circuit with the ability to induce and quantitatively control expression in Arabidopsis thaliana root epidermal cells. The circuit design uses an externally applied ligand that activates a computationally designed transcriptional response driven by a tissue specific promoter to control output (GFP expression). In addition, I engineered a circuit that adds a positive feedback motif. To quantify the behaviors of these circuits I developed a MATLAB program to remove background signals from confocal microscopy images and quantify GFP signal in a high-throughput manner. The genetic circuit is highly specific for root epidermal cells, controllable with external ligand, and has increased sensitivity and memory with positive feedback. The concepts and components of these circuits can be implemented in future designs to engineer and produce plants with more predictable and diverse behaviors affording the operator greater control

Control and Characterization of Line-Addressable Micromirror Arrays

This research involved the design and implementation of a complete line-addressable control system for a 32x32 electrostatic piston-actuated micromirror array device. Line addressing reduces the number of control lines from N2 to 2N making it possible to design larger arrays and arrays with smaller element sizes. The system utilizes the electromechanical bi-stability of individual elements to bold arbitrary bi-stable phase patterns. The control system applies pulse width modulated (PWM) signals to the rows and columns of the micromirror array. Three modes of operation were conceived and built into the system. The first was the traditional signal scheme which requires the array to be reset before a new pattern can be applied. The second is an original scheme that allows dynamic switching between bi-stable patterns. The third and final mode applies an effective voltage ramp across the device by operating above mechanical cutoff. Device characterization and control system testing were conducted on predesigned and prefabricated samples from two different foundry processes. Testing results showed that the control system was successfully integrated. However, bi-stable control of individual mirror elements was not successfully demonstrated on samples due to flaws in the device design. A more robust device design which corrects these flaws and increases operational yield is proposed

Fault and Defect Tolerant Computer Architectures: Reliable Computing With Unreliable Devices

This research addresses design of a reliable computer from unreliable device technologies. A system architecture is developed for a fault and defect tolerant (FDT) computer. Trade-offs between different techniques are studied and yield and hardware cost models are developed. Fault and defect tolerant designs are created for the processor and the cache memory. Simulation results for the content-addressable memory (CAM)-based cache show 90% yield with device failure probabilities of 3 x 10(-6), three orders of magnitude better than non fault tolerant caches of the same size. The entire processor achieves 70% yield with device failure probabilities exceeding 10(-6). The required hardware redundancy is approximately 15 times that of a non-fault tolerant design. While larger than current FT designs, this architecture allows the use of devices much more likely to fail than silicon CMOS. As part of model development, an improved model is derived for NAND Multiplexing. The model is the first accurate model for small and medium amounts of redundancy. Previous models are extended to account for dependence between the inputs and produce more accurate results

Proceedings of Abstracts Engineering and Computer Science Research Conference 2019

© 2019 The Author(s). This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. For further details please see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Note: Keynote: Fluorescence visualisation to evaluate effectiveness of personal protective equipment for infection control is © 2019 Crown copyright and so is licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Under this licence users are permitted to copy, publish, distribute and transmit the Information; adapt the Information; exploit the Information commercially and non-commercially for example, by combining it with other Information, or by including it in your own product or application. Where you do any of the above you must acknowledge the source of the Information in your product or application by including or linking to any attribution statement specified by the Information Provider(s) and, where possible, provide a link to this licence: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/This book is the record of abstracts submitted and accepted for presentation at the Inaugural Engineering and Computer Science Research Conference held 17th April 2019 at the University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK. This conference is a local event aiming at bringing together the research students, staff and eminent external guests to celebrate Engineering and Computer Science Research at the University of Hertfordshire. The ECS Research Conference aims to showcase the broad landscape of research taking place in the School of Engineering and Computer Science. The 2019 conference was articulated around three topical cross-disciplinary themes: Make and Preserve the Future; Connect the People and Cities; and Protect and Care

Mathematical modeling of nitrogen regulated biological systems

Mención Internacional en el título de doctorThis doctoral thesis was supported through the FPI contract BES-2017-079755 associated to the grant FIS2016-78313-P from Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MCIN)/Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI)/ 10.13039/501100011033/ and FEDER Una manera de hacer Europa. Additionally the author also acknowledge finantial support from MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 through grant BADS, no. PID2019-109320GB-100Programa de Doctorado en Ingeniería Matemática por la Universidad Carlos III de MadridPresidente: Luis Guillermo Morelli.- Secretaria: María Pilar Guerrero Contreras.- Vocal: Vicente Mariscal Romer