Synthetic microbial differentiation for engineered division of labour and population growth control

Abstract
In this seminar, I will talk about recent forays of my lab into Synthetic Biology. Synbio strives to engineer and control living systems beyond their natural capabilities. More rule than exception, engineered microbes suffer from the burden of synthetic circuitry that is never fully insulated from the host it resides in. We address this long-standing challenge by engineering E. coli populations to synthetically differentiate into distinct cell types that engage into division of labour. I will show how emulating certain characteristics of cell differentiation of higher organisms allows for stringent bacterial population growth control, and I will touch on the system’s failure modes and applicability.

Bio
Tobias Bergmiller is a Lecturer at the University of Exeter, UK. He received his PhD at ETH Zurich in Molecular Microbial Evolution, followed by a PostDoc with Calin Guet at a newly formed Institute of Science and Technology Austria, ISTA, in Vienna. Work in his group spans a range of topics including bacteriophage biology, epigenetic mechanisms of gene expression in bacteria and synthetic biology, and combines quantitative single-cell microbiology, microfluidics and microscopy.