Abstract

Cell-free transcription-translation coupled reactions (Tx-Tl) has become a powerful tool for biotechnology and bioengineering. The use of this technology in developing countries is limited by the prohibitive prices and for the batch-to-batch variability issue. In this work, we have set up a protocol for generating in-house low-cost cell-free reactions and we are currently studying the dynamics of ratiometric DNA devices that allow the expression of two independent fluorescent proteins (YFP and CFP) in five different batches of cell-free. From these chemical reaction models, we built a mathematical model that consists of a set of ordinary differential equations (ODE) describing rates of change of mRNAs, immature proteins, mature proteins and resources for transcription and translation. We consider that each reaction contains a limited set of resources for transcription and translation (TsR, and TlR respectively) that participate as substrates in those reactions and that may be subjected to degradation as well.