{"id":170215,"date":"2009-02-07T11:50:53","date_gmt":"2009-02-07T11:50:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/genetic-engineering-of-living-cells\/"},"modified":"2020-05-22T13:38:13","modified_gmt":"2020-05-22T20:38:13","slug":"genetic-engineering-of-living-cells","status":"publish","type":"msr-project","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/genetic-engineering-of-living-cells\/","title":{"rendered":"Genetic Engineering of Living Cells"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"asset-content\">Synthetic biology aims at producing novel biological systems to carry out some desired and well-defined functions. An ultimate dream is to design these systems at a high level of abstraction using engineering-based tools and programming languages, press a button, and have the design translated to DNA sequences that can be synthesised and put to work in living cells. We introduce such a programming language, which allows logical interactions between potentially undetermined proteins and genes to be expressed in a modular manner. Programs can be translated by a compiler into sequences of biological parts, a process which relies on logic programming and prototype databases containing known biological parts and protein interactions. Programs can also be translated to reactions, allowing simulations to be carried out. The language is a first step towards the automatic translation of high-level behavioural designs to low-level DNA code.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We introduce a programming language, which allows logical interactions between potentially undetermined proteins and genes to be expressed in a modular manner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":292265,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","footnotes":""},"research-area":[13553],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-170215","msr-project","type-msr-project","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","msr-research-area-medical-health-genomics","msr-locale-en_us","msr-archive-status-active"],"msr_project_start":"2009-02-07","related-publications":[563013,500888,489482,475950,473388,487688,215386,168811,166390,163399,162766,157039,702544,665856,640398,590737],"related-downloads":[],"related-videos":[],"related-groups":[],"related-events":[],"related-opportunities":[],"related-posts":[305528],"related-articles":[],"tab-content":[{"id":0,"name":"Download","content":"<ul>\r\n \t<li><a href=\"http:\/\/biology.azurewebsites.net\/gec\/beta\"><strong>BETA v2015-0310<\/strong><\/a>. <a href=\"http:\/\/dsd.azurewebsites.net\/beta\/browsers.txt\" target=\"_self\">Browser Compatibility<\/a><\/li>\r\n \t<li>\r\n<div align=\"left\"><a href=\"http:\/\/biology.azurewebsites.net\/gec\"><strong>MAIN v2013-0123<\/strong><\/a>. Requires <a href=\"http:\/\/www.silverlight.net\/getstarted\/\">Silverlight 4.0<\/a> for Windows or Mac.<\/div><\/li>\r\n \t<li>\r\n<div align=\"left\">Documentation: User <a class=\"invalidLink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/gec-manual.pdf\">Manual<\/a> and introductory <a class=\"invalidLink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/gec-gec_tutorial.pdf\">Tutorial<\/a>.<\/div><\/li>\r\n \t<li>Michael Pedersen's <a class=\"invalidLink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/gec-pedersen_thesis.pdf\">PhD thesis<\/a>, which includes a chapter on GEC.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Archive:<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/biology.azurewebsites.net\/gec\/2011_0722\/\" target=\"_new\">v2011-0722<\/a><\/li>\r\n<\/ul>"},{"id":1,"name":"Acknowledgements","content":"<ul>\r\n \t<li>GEC\u00a0was developed by Michael Pedersen, Matthew Lakin, Filippo Polo, Rasmus Petersen,\u00a0Colin Gravill, <a class=\"invalidLink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/people\/ndalchau\/\">Neil Dalchau<\/a> and <a class=\"invalidLink\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/people\/aphillip\/\" target=\"_new\">Andrew Phillips<\/a> at Microsoft Research.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>GEC\u00a0uses\u00a0a <a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk\/gdp\/publications\/Lang_Bio_Sys_Design_Spec.pdf\" target=\"_new\">Language for Biological Systems<\/a> (LBS) as a target for compilation.\u00a0LBS was developed by Michael Pedersen under a Microsoft PhD scholarship supervised by <a href=\"http:\/\/homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk\/gdp\" target=\"_new\">Gordon Plotkin<\/a>, <a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/csbe.bio.ed.ac.uk\/\" target=\"_new\">Centre for Systems Biology at Edinburgh<\/a>, University of Edinburgh.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>The core\u00a0GEC language was developed in <a class=\"invalidLink\" href=\"http:\/\/fsharp.org\/\">F#<\/a>.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>GEC\u00a0uses <a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/dynamicdatadisplay.codeplex.com\/releases\/view\/42438\" target=\"_new\">Dynamic Data Display<\/a> for visualising simulation plots.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>GEC\u00a0uses <a class=\"invalidLink\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/microsoft-automatic-graph-layout\/\" target=\"_new\">Microsoft Automatic Graph Layout<\/a> for visualising networks.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>"},{"id":2,"name":"Related Publications","content":"<ul>\r\n \t<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencemag.org\/content\/331\/6018\/669.summary\">Coming Soon to a Lab Near You: Drag-and-Drop Virtual Worlds<\/a>. <em>Science<\/em> 331:669-671. February 2011.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Priscilla E. M. Purnick and Ron Weiss. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/nrm\/journal\/v10\/n6\/abs\/nrm2698.html\" target=\"_new\">The second wave of synthetic biology: from modules to systems<\/a>. <em>Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology<\/em> 10:410-422. June 2009.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>"},{"id":3,"name":"Contact","content":"Andrew Phillips (<a>firstname.lastname@microsoft.com<\/a>)"}],"slides":[],"related-researchers":[],"msr_research_lab":[199561],"msr_impact_theme":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-project\/170215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-project"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/msr-project"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-project\/170215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":661911,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-project\/170215\/revisions\/661911"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"msr-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-area?post=170215"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=170215"},{"taxonomy":"msr-impact-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-impact-theme?post=170215"},{"taxonomy":"msr-pillar","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-pillar?post=170215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}