Synthetic Biology Design and Analysis: A Case Study of Frequency Entrained Biological Clock

Biological clock, a self sustaining oscillation widely discovered in many species, is important to determine many biological activities,for example, the sleep-wake cycle. Although the frequency entrainment of biological clock has long been observed, the exact biochemical mechanism for this property has not been proposed. Recent advances in synthetic biology have led researchers to engineer new or better biological systems that may or may not exist in nature. In this work, by adapting the ideas of an electronic circuit, phase lock loop, we design and analyze a genetic circuit that allows the frequency entrainment of its internal biological clock, which demonstrates that knowledge and experiences accumulated in other engineering fields are great sources for the further development of synthetic biology.