The engineering of biological systems is critical to provide effective solutions to many societal challenges including energy and the environment, sustainability, and health and medicine. Genetically encoded technologies that perform programmed cellular computation, logic, and control operations are critical to advancing the scale and complexity at which we can engineer, manipulate, and probe biological systems. We have developed a general approach for assembling RNA devices from modular components that exhibit basic functions of sensing, actuation, and information transmission. The engineered RNA devices can execute higher-order cellular information processing operations that include logic gates (AND, NOR, NAND, OR gates) and signal filters, and exhibit programmed cooperativity. RNA devices process and transmit molecular input signals received by integrated sensor components to regulated protein level outputs, linking computation and logic to gene expression patterns and thus cellular behavior. Our modular assembly schemes provide a framework that enables rational design and programming of RNA devices from independent functional components, allows component reuse without complex redesign, and offers the potential to extend designs to more complex information processing schemes. Coupled with technologies that enable the de novo generation of new RNA sensor components, the assembly schemes allow researchers to construct various user-programmed information processing operations in living systems and highlight the potential of synthetic biology strategies to support the rapid engineering of cellular behavior. The applications of these RNA devices to noninvasive biosensing and programming cellular function will be discussed.

Extended Abstract Status: Not Uploaded