Next Monday, 19th of January at 11:30, we have the pleasure to listen to Manish Kushwaha from Micalis Institute, INRAE, Jouy-en-Josas. The title of Manish’s talk is:
** Bacteriophages as Communication Signals: Information Processing in Multicellular Bacterial Systems **
This seminar will take place at the seminar room of Gulliver C1.62 at 11:30.
Abstract
Coordinated actions of cells in microbial communities and multicellular organisms enable them to perform complex tasks that may not be accessible for single cells. This has inspired biological engineers to build cellular consortia for larger circuits with improved functionalities, while implementing communication systems for coordination between cells. In this talk, I will present our lab’s work on engineering a synthetic communication channel in bacterial populations by repurposing bacteriophage particles as programmable information carriers. We use filamentous phages to transmit DNA “messages” between cells, defining a molecular signalling approach with high payload capacity, tuneable specificity, and non-local interaction range. Sender cells emit phage signals, while receiver cells interpret incoming DNA signals using CRISPR interference, coupling communication to gene regulation and computation. We characterise the signalling dynamics of the system, showing how cellular physiological state, growth conditions, and resource competition shape effective communication. Leveraging the easy programmability of DNA messages, we build several orthogonal signals and demonstrate that intercellular CRISPRi (i-CRISPRi) regulates gene expression across cells. These multicellular circuits perform single- and multi-input logic gate operations involving up to seven interacting cell types, using both single- and dual-rail encoding schemes. The communication system presented here lays the groundwork for implementing complex biological circuits in engineered bacterial communities, using DNA as a communication signal.
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