  Genetic oscillators are a major theme of interest in the emerging field of
synthetic biology. Until recently, most work has been carried out using
intra-cellular oscillators, but this approach restricts the broader
applicability of such systems. Motivated by a desire to develop large-scale,
spatially-distributed cell-based computational systems, we present an initial
design for a population-level oscillator which uses three different bacterial
strains. Our system is based on the client-server model familiar to computer
science, and uses quorum sensing for communication between nodes. We present
the results of extensive in silico simulation tests, which confirm that our
design is both feasible and robust.
