IGEM:Melbourne/2008/BioClock/Questions
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Leave any questions:
1) Are we sure that others haven't finished/worked on bio-clock? Many other groups considered building a bio-clock (eg. IGEM2006 Imperial) before but abandoned it due to various reasons. We may be able to get ideas on how to build a bio-clock from partially completed projects of others.
2) Our focus now is on how to build a bio-clock. If we have a bio-clock, what is its uses/applications?
- It acts as a fully customisable method of temporal regulation (allows us to control what genes are switched on when)
- This seems like a simple goal but is actually more useful than it first appears. When people think about what a gene does, they generally think along the lines of "this gene encodes protein X which catalyses reaction Y" but the reality is that the function of a gene is also dependent on the where and when (the regulation) of the gene. If complex systems are to be created through the use of synthetic biology, there must first be complex regulatory systems in place to control them.
