Javier Macia Santamaria

Group website

Research Outline

Our research focuses on the use of synthetic biology as a framework for the development of living technology that can complement or replace the current electromechanical technology on which most of the biomedical devices are based. To achieve these objectives it is necessary both the development of new technological approaches and the exploration of the fundamental principles that govern the dynamics of genetic circuits.

 

Research Lines

  • Development of a new technology for industrial production of paper printed cell circuits. ​The objective is the creation of multicellular circuits with computing capacity on paper support. These circuits are printed with different inks formed by genetically modified cells. Printing is done using a standard printer. These circuits have a direct application in the detection of different combinations of biological signals, which can potentially go far beyond the current systems based on dry chemistry.​​
  • Development of a new metric to quantify the metabolic load induced in a cell due to presence of foreign genes.
 

Team during 2017-18

  • PhD students: Eva Gonzalez-Flo, Sira Mogas Diez, Elaheh Kheirabadi.
  • Technicians: Miquel Sas Gil. 
     

Selected publications 2017-18

  • Urrios A, Gonzalez-Flo E, Canadell D, de Nadal E, Macia J, Posas F. Plug-and-Play Multicellular Circuits with Time-Dependent Dynamic Responses. ACS Synthetic Biology 2018; 7(4): 1095-1104.
  • Macia J, Vidiella B, Solé R. Synthetic associative learning in engineered multicellular consortia. Journal of the Royal Society interface 2017; 14(129).