University of California-Berkeley CBET-0756801
Intellectual Merit
This project aims to make programmable the rules for engineering new functional protein-protein interactions as a means of controlling pathway flux at the posttranslational level. These strategies will be compatible with well-developed methods of transcriptional regulation as well as providing faster responses. Success in this aim would be a significant breakthrough in the field of Synthetic Biology, an emerging field maturing out of the classical genetic engineering field that seeks to make design of such systems predictable, reliable, cheaper, and scalable to larger "circuits" (i.e. pathways) than is currently feasible, by creating design standards and protocols for interconnecting biological parts. While it is somewhat straightforward in current technology to link together different gene expression control elements in arbitrary arrangements (exogenous biosynthetic pathways like unnatural polyketide synthesis or isoprenoid synthesis are examples), it is far less easy to, in a generic way, introduce new connections mediated by protein-protein interactions.
Broader Impact:
Students are to participate in the proposed project and an allied training program, iGEM, aimed at educating high school and undergraduate students in a university research environment. The investigators frequently give lectures on these projects to both University of California - Berkeley undergraduate classes and as invited speakers at other universities. Research results will be published in peer-reviewed journals and all constructs will be made freely available to the public at the MIT parts repository.
