Quantifying Cellular Capacity to Identify Gene Expression Designs With Reduced Burden

Heterologous gene expression can be a significant burden to cells, consuming resources and causing decreased growth and stability. We describe here an in vivo monitor that tracks E. coli capacity changes in real-time and can be used to assay the burden synthetic constructs and their parts impose. By measuring capacity, construct designs with reduced burden can be identifiedand shown to predictably outperform less efficient designs, despite having equivalent expression outputs.