Applications
Using this project as a foundation other groups must be able to take a step further with their synthetic biology system. Being that, it will be possible to quantify the interaction between different systems, and use it to improve other projects' modelling. Furthermore, we took into account the time needed to produce the components of the system and the number of plasmid copies, generating a more realistic result. The next step must be to consider the cross talk between systems that was measured and work to minimize them, creating more orthogonal circuits.
The quorum sensing systems can be an innovative tool, enabling the design of a complex system with a cascade of controlled reactions. A good use of this will enhance the success of systems that utilize bacteria as biofactories. Such is the case in synthetic communities, where you can design a division of labor between strains of bacteria mediated by quorum sensing, thus proportional to the population size. The same premise works to every circuit that uses logic gates, since you can treat the 1 and the 0 as presence or absence of a certain quorum sensing activator. For example, the presence of one activator induces the production of other, and the coexisting of them generates a third response. The mathematical modeling for a system like this is better developed in our modeling section. We also hypothesized a system that uses quorum sensing as a modulator to a kill switch, which keeps the population in a default threshold.
All of these examples are only a snippet of all the applications for this incredible system. With more understanding it's secure to say that several areas of the society will benefit from works with quorum sensing!