Davidson Missouri W

The Team

The Team	The Faculty	Team Logos
Davidson Oyinade Adefuye Will DeLoache Jim Dickson Andrew Martens Amber Shoecraft Mike Waters	A. Malcom Campbell Karmella Haynes Laurie Heyer
Missouri Western Jordan Baumgardner Tom Crowley Lane H. Heard Nickolaus Morton Michelle Ritter Jessica Treece Matthew Unzicker Amanda Valencia	Todd Eckdahl Jeff Poet

The Problem

In Depth

Overview

Background Information Current Project: Solving the Hamiltonian Path Problem in vivo Probability and Statistics Gene Splitting Controlling Expression Traveling Salesperson Problem Backwards promotion and Read-Through Transcription Resources and Citations

Hamiltonian Path Problem As a part of iGEM2006, a combined team from Davidson College and Missouri Western State University reconstituted a hin/hix DNA recombination mechanism which exists in nature in Salmonella as standard biobricks for use in E. coli. The purpose of the 2006 combined team was to provide a proof of concept for a bacterial computer in using this mechanism to solve a variation of The Pancake Problem from Computer Science. This task utilized both biology and mathematics students and faculty from the two institutions. For 2007, we continue our collaboration and our efforts to manipulate E. coli into mathematics problem solvers as we refine our efforts with the hin/hix mechanism to explore another mathematics problem, the Hamiltonian Path Problem. This problem was the subject of a groundbreaking paper by Adelman in 1994 (citation below) where a unique Hamiltonian path was found in vitro for a particular directed graph on seven nodes. We propose to make progress toward solving the particular problem in vivo.