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Updated: Jun 30, 2026

Reliably Engineering and Controlling Stable Optogenetic Gene Circuits in Mammalian Cells
Published on: July 6, 2021
Tweaking biological switches through a better understanding of bistability behavior
Anushree Chatterjee1, Yiannis N Kaznessis, Wei-Shou Hu
1Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Minnesota, 421 Washington Avenue SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455-0132, USA.
Abstract:
Many biological events are binary. The switch between mutually exclusive OFF to ON state in response to a stimulus is frequently mediated by a control circuit with a positive and/or a negative feedback. Such a system typically exhibits hysteresis with its switching ON and OFF stimulus levels dependent on the current state of the system. The system can be shown to be bistable both experimentally and mathematically. Work to synthesize such switches by combining natural or engineered components has begun to illustrate the potential of such control circuits in many areas of applications.
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