Construction of a genetic toggle switch in E. coli
[http://www.bio.davidson.edu/courses/synthetic/papers/Collins_ToggleSwitch.pdf Construction of a genetic toggle switch in Escherichia coli Timothy S. Gardner, et al. 2000.]
Authors
Timothy Gardner
Charles Cantor
James Collins
Methods
Supplementary Material
Helpful Information
If you are having trouble determining the meaning of Type I-IV plasmids, look at the first page of the supporting materials [1]. Each plasmid type has a different arrangement of promoters/repressors/GFP. Try to keep track of how different plasmid types should act in different environments. Types I-III serve as control plasmids, while Type IV plasmids are the ones responsible for the toggle switch.
Ribosomal Binding Site (RBS) efficiency refers to the likelyhood that a given RBS will attract a ribosome for translation of mRNA. In this paper, RBS strengths are varied to allow for control of the rate of protein synthesis. This is how "promoter strengths" are balanced with repression strength the different promoter/repressor combinations.
Cooperativity of the repressor when binding to a promoter is an important aspect of the mathematical model presented in this paper. Click here for more information on cooperative binding.
What is a bimodal distribution?
