Foundational technologies
New tools and approaches are required in order to build information-processing systems in cells. If these tools are flexible enough, they can be applied to diverse set of specific cases, just like basic electronic building blocks can be integrated in an endless repertoire of devices and circuits. Any information processing system requires sensors to read out the requisite information; the bona fide computational module where the information is processed in a programmed fashion; and an actuation module that implements the results of a computation.
The same classification is valid in the biological context. Therefore we work on developing new sensors, computing modules, and actuators, as well as on combining them in a robust and reliable fashion into integrated systems. We are currently focused mainly on sensing gene-regulatory inputs such as microRNA and Transcription Factors. Our computing modules can be approximated as Boolean circuits, also known as digital, or logic, circuits. However this is a high-level approximation and in reality the circuits also operate in the continuous regime (analog computing).