Formal Methods for the Synthesis of Biomolecular Circuits

Summary

The seminar brought together experts in formal methods for the verification and synthesis of hardware and software with wet-lab and dry-lab synthetic biologists to (1) achieve a common understanding of the current state of design methodology in synthetic biology; (2) to identify the limitations of current approaches and (3) to investigate dedicated solutions to the synthesis problem in synthetic biology. Some of these methods are based on leveraging experience and methods from electronic design automation (EDA) and from program synthesis and verification. In addition, ideas for entirely new methodologies specifically tailored for synthetic biology are likely to emerge. For example, features that are not apparent in electronic circuits such as heterogeneity and variability between the cells and between the circuits embedded in different cells, were addressed.

Apart from talk by participants, the seminar also featured break out session that were well received by the participants. In particular, we had sessions on "Modeling context-dependency of synthetic circuits" on "Metrology in Synthetic Biology" and on "Formal Specification for Biological Circuit Synthesis".