Project conducted in 2009.

PROBLEM

Chemotaxis is vital to the operation of many biological systems from single-cells to the immune & nervous systems. Although external observations of chemotaxis had been carried out the internal mechanism remained a ‘black box’.

Research conducted whilst working as a Research Associate in the Oxford University Engineering Department & Oxford Centre of Integrative Systems Biology in 2009.

INTERVENTION

My research was awarded the Institute of Engineering & Technology prize, presented in Bioengineering conferences and published in scientific journals.

• I used principles of System & Control engineering to reverse engineer the sensory & navigational mechanism of bacteria, known as BACTERIAL CHEMOTAXIS.
• Identified how the mechanism can be controlled and re-designed.
• Tested the potential to design biosensors with improved or different functionality.

This work provided a step further to establish how Control / System engineering can be applied on the complexity of biological   systems to create modular building blocks and allow us to   systematically design and re-design them. At the time, the main applications of this study that I was interested in were:

• Cancer - Better understanding tumour metastasis & growth,
• Biosensors - Detector of pollutants in water & soil.

The project was at the forefront of what is known today as SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY.