Researchers Build a Toolbox for Synthetic Biology

[TECH NEWS]

For about a dozen years, synthetic biologists have been working on ways to design genetic circuits to perform novel functions such as manufacturing new drugs, producing fuel or even programming the suicide of cancer cells. Achieving these complex functions requires controlling many genetic and cellular components, including not only genes but also the regulatory proteins that turn them on and off. Now Timothy Lu and his colleagues at Boston University, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital have come up with a new method to design transcription factors for nonbacterial cells (in this case, yeast cells). Their initial library of 19 new transcription factors should help overcome the existing bottleneck that has limited synthetic biology applications, Lu says. The project is part of a larger, ongoing effort to develop genetic “parts” that can be assembled into circuits to achieve specific functions. Through this endeavor, Lu and his colleagues hope to make it easier to develop circuits that do exactly what a researcher wants.

August 3, 2012, Anne Trafton, MIT News Office