this study presents a synthetic multicellular system for programmed pattern formation. the researchers investigated how different parameters affect the characteristics of the band detect network. they created a contour map showing the effects of ci and laci repression efficiencies (βc and βl) on band-detect gain. the contour map was computed from simulations of 25 different values of βc and 40 different values of βl, with all other rate constants kept constant. gain is defined as (max_bd - min_bd)/min_bd, where max_bd is the maximum gfp response over all ranges of ahl considered, and min_bd is the maximum of the minimum gfp responses left and right of the peak. the minimum allowed gfp concentrations for min_left and min_right were set to 0.1 μm to avoid unnaturally high gains. the study found that only a particular range of βc and βl values results in optimized band-detect responses. figures s1 and s2 show the phase space diagram of band-detect gain as a function of repression efficiencies and surface maps of fluorescence intensities on solid-phase, illustrating the position and width of distinct rings. the fluorescence intensities of dsred-express (bd2-red) and gfp (bd3) are scaled to a maximum of 100 in arbitrary units. the results demonstrate the ability to control and optimize pattern formation in a synthetic multicellular system.this study presents a synthetic multicellular system for programmed pattern formation. the researchers investigated how different parameters affect the characteristics of the band detect network. they created a contour map showing the effects of ci and laci repression efficiencies (βc and βl) on band-detect gain. the contour map was computed from simulations of 25 different values of βc and 40 different values of βl, with all other rate constants kept constant. gain is defined as (max_bd - min_bd)/min_bd, where max_bd is the maximum gfp response over all ranges of ahl considered, and min_bd is the maximum of the minimum gfp responses left and right of the peak. the minimum allowed gfp concentrations for min_left and min_right were set to 0.1 μm to avoid unnaturally high gains. the study found that only a particular range of βc and βl values results in optimized band-detect responses. figures s1 and s2 show the phase space diagram of band-detect gain as a function of repression efficiencies and surface maps of fluorescence intensities on solid-phase, illustrating the position and width of distinct rings. the fluorescence intensities of dsred-express (bd2-red) and gfp (bd3) are scaled to a maximum of 100 in arbitrary units. the results demonstrate the ability to control and optimize pattern formation in a synthetic multicellular system.