Cells sense internal and external mechanical forces and convert them into biochemical signals through the processes of mechanosensing and mechanotransduction that eventually lead to biological changes. This suggests that timely application of appropriate external forces on a cell/molecule may directly influence the dynamics of the internal processes, such as regulation of gene and protein expression. Forces involved in such changes are very small, ranging from nano-Newtons down to pico-Newtons. Such scale of magnitude presents a new challenge in developing technologies to measure and, more important, to control such forces. The objective of this research is to develop new force-control techniques for biomanipulation that enables accurate application of dynamical forces on biological cells/molecules to control their behaviour.

Force control for biomanipulation

Modeling and control
of genetic regulatory networks

A fundamental problem in the study of biological cellular behavior is to understand how biological activities are governed by the connectivity of genes and proteins. Such connectivity can be represented in the form of genetic regulatory networks (or simply, gene networks). A gene network consists of a group of genes that interact among themselves in order to synthesize certain products, i.e., proteins. The types and amount of proteins produced by a gene network have a fundamental effect on the development of the gene network itself, and on the biological systems with which the network interacts. The ability to control the behavior of gene networks would have great impact on the fields of biomedicine and bioengineering (e.g., development of new drugs and medical treatment techniques). The objective of this research is to develop a framework for modeling and control of gene networks using formal languages and automata.

A potential synergy between the above two areas exsits in the sense that control strategies synthesized for regulating gene expression activities may be implemented by means of direct application of exogenous force on the gene network to achieve the desired biological behavior.

Force control for micromanipulation