Synthetic Genetic Oscillators
Michael Elowitz and Stanislas Leibler created the repressilator—first synthetic genetic oscillator—in 2000, demonstrating engineered biological computation. The work appeared in Nature establishing synthetic biology as rigorous engineering discipline. Researchers subsequently built diverse oscillators—dual-feedback oscillators, metabolic oscillators, and coupled oscillator arrays creating synchronized populations.
Chemical Reactions as Logic Operations
Erik Winfree and colleagues demonstrated chemical reaction networks can implement Boolean logic and computation. Ross and Hjelmfelt showed chemical systems perform universal computation. Synthetic biologists engineer metabolic and genetic circuits implementing logic through chemical reactions. Computer scientists study chemical computing’s theoretical foundations.
Central Dogma Mathematical Formulation
Francis Crick formulated the central dogma conceptually. Mathematical biologists translate information flow into differential equations. Systems biology pioneers like Uri Alon and Eduardo Sontag developed quantitative models of gene expression. Computational biologists simulate transcription-translation dynamics predicting protein production rates from promoter strengths and degradation constants.