Design of a biomolecular adaptive controller to restore sustained periodic behavior

Abstract

Periodic behavior is a widespread biological phenomenon occurring across various spatiotemporal scales, where upstream stimuli are encoded into dynamic intracellular signals such as oscillations, varying in duration, amplitude, and frequency. Disruptions to this periodicity can lead to a range of pathologies, for which we propose an adaptive feedback controller with an Incoherent Feedforward Loop (IFFL)-like topology, based on chemical reactions, designed to restore sustained oscillations in systems that have lost their periodicity. By approximating the controllers dynamics, we defined the design requirements for the first implementation of a biomolecular adaptive controller and tested its applicability for destabilizing the steady-state behavior of a self-inhibiting gene. Numerical simulations illustrate the adaptive behavior of the controller and its ability to tune both the amplitude and the period of the resulting oscillations.