Cells can be engineered to respond in observable ways to environmental stimuli. These cells can be embedded into devices that can quantify the signal generated by the cell response. The goal of this project is to develop cell engineering strategies to improve the design of cells that respond to specific cues. This will enable the design of devices for a variety of applications from diagnostic to therapeutic. This project will also provide educational and training opportunities to students belonging to underrepresented groups. Specifically, training, research, and mentoring opportunities will be offered to high school teachers and students from the Greater Houston area.
Receptor engineering has created innovative approaches to endow cells with seemingly endless sensing capabilities. Most of this has been accomplished by rewiring native ligand-receptor interactions or evolving non- native or de novo designed receptors linked to orthogonal transduction signaling modules. The performance of current ligand-based sensors – in terms of system control and dynamic properties – is strictly dependent on the mechanism of transduction. This may not recapitulate accurately the features of the cellular response to the ligand and the intended function of the cellular device. To address this issue, synthetic biology strategies to engineer cellular devices that generate user-defined outputs will be explored. This approach could dramatically change the way cellular devices that sense and respond to the environment are designed. The resulting strategy can be applied to virtually any process associated with a transcriptional response. This would eliminate the need to rewire ligand-receptor interactions or evolve synthetic receptor-based devices, and may be used in combination with existing ligand-receptor based systems.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
