Team:BostonU/Temporal Control
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Overview
Our project this summer was making molecules that can change DNA when we want them to change it. The field of synthetic biology seeks to engineer desirable cellular functionalities by developing molecular technologies that enable precise genetic manipulation. A promising solution is to reliably control proteins that naturally execute genetic modifications. Current strategies to regulate activity of such proteins primarily rely on modulating protein expression level through transcriptional control; however, these methods are susceptible to slow response and leaky expression.In contrast, strategies that exploit post-translational regulation of activity, such as conditional dimerization, bypassed these limitations and allowed us to gain temporal control of protein activity: which can enable us to modulate different cell states. Examples of important cell state modulation are expressing genes in specific tissues of mice and building more functional, dynamic systems.
We were first interested in gaining temporal control of proteins involved in manipulating DNA for conditional gene expression and genetic logic applications. Controllable gene expression and controllable genome editing are two important problems that synthetic biologists are trying to address. Realization of these applications is often executed by proteins that interact with DNA and manipulate it.