A split intein T7 RNA polymerase for transcriptional AND-logic

作者：Schaerli Yolanda^*; Gili Maguei; Isalan Mark

来源：Nucleic Acids Research, 2014, 42(19): 12322-12328.

DOI：10.1093/nar/gku884

Synthetic biology has developed numerous parts for building synthetic gene circuits. However, few parts have been described for prokaryotes to integrate two signals at a promoter in an AND fashion, i.e. the promoter is only activated in the presence of both signals. Here we present a new part for this function: a split intein T7 RNA polymerase. We divide T7 RNA polymerase into two expression domains and fuse each to a split intein. Only when both domains are expressed does the split intein mediate protein trans-splicing, yielding a full-length T7 RNA polymerase that can transcribe genes via a T7 promoter. We demonstrate an AND gate with the new part: the signal-to-background ratio is very high, resulting in an almost digital signal. This has utility for more complex circuits and so we construct a band-pass filter in Escherichia coli. The split intein approach should be widely applicable for engineering artificial gene circuit parts.

• 出版日期2014-10-29