Difference between revisions of "Programming RNA Devices to Control Cellular Information Processing"

Latest revision as of 17:56, 29 April 2009

By Christina Smolke, Stanford University

May 5, 2009

CNLS Conference room

The engineering of biological systems is critical to developing effective solutions to many societal challenges including energy and food production, environmental quality, and health and medicine. Our ability to transmit information to and from living systems, and to process and act on information inside cells, is critical to advancing the complexity at which we can engineer, manipulate, and probe biological systems. Genetically encoded technologies that perform information processing, communication, and control operations are needed to produce new cellular functions from the diverse molecular information encoded in the various properties of small molecules, proteins, and RNA present within biological systems. Recent progress has been made in the construction of RNA devices that process and transmit molecular input signals that are received by integrated sensor domains to targeted protein level outputs, linking computation and logic to gene expression and thus cellular behavior. Modular composition frameworks have been developed that enable the rational assembly of RNA devices exhibiting complex functions from independent components that exhibit basic functions. The modularity inherent in these composition frameworks enables efficient device design through component reuse strategies and the potential to extend designs to more sophisticated information processing schemes, highlighting the potential of such synthetic biology strategies to support the rapid engineering of cellular behavior. Computational frameworks have also been developed that translate sequence information to device function to enable the rational programming and optimization of device performance. Coupled with technologies that enable the de novo generation of new RNA sensor components, RNA devices allow researchers to construct various user-programmed information processing operations in living systems. The application of these molecular devices to developing new disease treatment strategies such as targeted cellular therapeutics will be discussed.

Back to CNLS q-bio Seminars.