Can the internal sense of time in a moss be captured, measured and reconstructed? This project aims to bottle the subjective experience of time in the moss Physcomitirum patens by developing a neochromsome clock. Exploring this question will help us to deepen our understanding of the subjective experience of time in plants.
Using state-of-the-art plant DNA assembly methods such as Golden Braid and TAR cloning, we aim to construct modular approaches to redesign the plant biological clock to study its current architecture and potentially its evolution. Synthetic biology technology will allow us to observe the internal temporal state of the moss by measuring gene activity in real time.
This research lives at the intersection of biology, computation and perception. With over 200 synthetic constructs planned and working with MSc and BSc students, the project also has the potential to train a new generation of plant synthetic biologists with expertise in building plant genomes.
The clock neochromomes will provide a powerful example for the study of other large and complex gene regulatory networks that control plant development and behaviour. It also opens the door to advances in the life sciences. The project embraces reproducibility, accessibility and interdisciplinary impact through the study of subjective time perception in plants and its agency.
