In Vitro Transcriptional Circuits

The structural similarity of neural networks and genetic regulatory networks to digital circuits, and hence to each other, was noted from the very beginning of their study [7,5]. Generic properties of both types of network have been analyzed using the same class of abstract models [3]. The same rate equations proposed for recurrent neural networks [4] have been used, with a few embellishments, to model genetic regulatory circuits controlling development of Drosophila embryos [6]. However, whereas research in neural networks has a long history of both analytic approaches, aimed at understanding the brain, and synthetic approaches, aimed at creating intelligent machines, research in genetic regulatory networks has been entirely analytic prior to very recent work implementing small synthetic genetic regulatory networks in E. Coli [8, 1, 2]. Although genetic regulatory systems are not fast, they are small; E. coli is one cubic micron yet it contains thousands of regulated genes.