PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - John P. Marken
AU  - Richard M. Murray
TI  - Addressable, “Packet-Based” Intercellular Communication through Plasmid Conjugation
AID  - 10.1101/591552
DP  - 2019 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 591552
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/03/27/591552.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/03/27/591552.full
AB  - We develop a system for implementing “packet-based” intercellular communication in an engineered bacterial population via conjugation. Our system uses gRNA-based identification markers that allow messages to be addressed to specific strains via Cas9-mediated cleavage of messages sent to the wrong recipient, which we show reduces plasmid transfer by four orders of magnitude. Integrase-mediated editing of the address on the message plasmid allows cells to dynamically update the message’s recipients in vivo. As a proof-of-concept demonstration of our system, we propose a linear path scheme that would propagate a message sequentially through the strains of a population in a defined order.