Supplementary Figure 10: Portability of the feedback controller in multiple E. coli strains.

(a) Comparison between the feedback system and the unregulated strain. The functionality of the controller was tested in BL21-DE3 (left panels) and MG1655 (right panels). The performance of the feedback system in presence of construct pSB1C3-H2 (Closed-Loop) was compared to the strain where only pSB1C3-H2 is present (H2). For both strains VioB-mCherry output from pSB1C3-H2 (lower panels) and cellular capacity (top panels) were characterised when different levels of arabinose are used to induce construct expression. Since BL21-DE3 cells do not bear the capacity monitor, growth rate 3 hours post-induction was used as a proxy for cellular capacity instead of the GFP production rate per cell. Error bars show standard deviation of three independent repeats. (b) Comparison between the feedback system and the open loop strain. The performance of the feedback system in presence of construct pSB1C3-H2 (Closed-Loop) was compared to an ‘Open-Loop’ version where the sgRNA targeting pBAD had been replaced by a random sgRNA with no affinity for any promoter. Dots show single repeats while bars show the mean value. Error bars show standard deviation of three independent repeats.