Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Spice
Steady state
Dynamics
Intercellular
BioSPICE
Figure 4.9
Tools for circuit design: Spice and BioSPICE.
In discussing biocircuit design, this section often highlights the role of
BioSPICE. With electrical circuits, tools such as SPICE [10] help designers
manage the complexity of their substrate and achieve reliable systems. The
BioSPICE prototype tool aims to help biocircuit designers in a similar manner.
It is an integrated collection of software tools that features analysis of the steady
state, dynamics, and intercellular behavior of genetic logic circuits (Figure 4.9).
BioSPICE enables the designer to analyze and simulate modifications to the be-
havioral characteristics of cellular gates. It can thus provide valuable insights
toward reliable system design, such as matching gate input/output threshold
levels.
A Biochemical Model of an Inverter
To implement digital-logic computation, an inverter combines several natu-
ral gene regulatory mechanisms. These mechanisms include transcriptional
