Synthetic Biology Building on Nature's Inspiration: Interdisciplinary Research Team Summaries (2010) / Chapter Skim
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IDR Team Summary 7: How do we move beyond genetics to engage chemical and physical approaches to synthetic biology?
IDR Team Summary 7: How do we move beyond genetics to engage chemical and physical approaches to synthetic biology?
Pages 61-70
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From page 61... ...
Recent advances in chemistry, physics, and engineering have provided powerful new routes to novel biological behavior. Chemists have demonstrated the capacity of cells and organisms to use non-standard substrates, including amino acids, fatty acids and sugars that don't occur naturally.
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From page 62... ...
? • How can control of spatial relationships among cells contribute to the engineering of novel biological function?
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From page 63... ...
Please be sure to review the second write-up, which immediately follows this one. IDR Team Members -- Group A • Anthony Forster, Vanderbilt University Medical System • Miguel Fuentes-Cabrera, Oak Ridge National Laboratory • Kent Kirshenbaum, New York University • Paul Laibinis, Vanderbilt University • Qing Lin, University at Buffalo • Noah Malmstadt, University of Southern California • Alanna Schepartz, Yale University • Bing Xu, Brandeis University • Elsa Yan, Yale University • Peng Yin, California Institute of Technology • Sonya Collins, University of Georgia IDR Team Summary -- Group A By Sonya Collins, Graduate Science Writing Student, University of Georgia The words men at work alert passersby that construction is underway.
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From page 64... ...
at the 2009 National Academies Keck Futures Initiatives Conference on Synthetic Biology that grappled with the challenge of devising chemical approaches to synthetic biology in order to push the limits of biology. The construction analogy, in fact, serves multiple purposes in illustrating both the need for synthetic biology and the challenge to this team, which asked: How do we move beyond genetics to engage chemical and physical approaches to synthetic biology?
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From page 65... ...
Because the body tends to degrade natural biochemicals much faster than it does unnatural compounds, it is advantageous to incorporate unnatural chemical groups into drugs. For this to take place on the ribosome -- the cell's protein factory where the compounds will be synthesized -- incorporation of synthetic amino acids must be allowed.
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From page 66... ...
Use synthetic (nucleic acid or protein) nanostructure to augment genomic information, for example, to create novel scaffolds for transport within the cell or to organize other molecules (such as a nonribosomal peptide synthetase pathway)
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From page 67... ...
The work of this team only begins to illustrate the ways in which synthetic biology can reach across disciplines to achieve greater control of biological functions and one day more fully reflect the design of complex multicellular systems. IDR Team Members -- Group B • Linda Chrisey, Office of Naval Research • Ratmir Derda, Harvard University • Bing Gong, University at Buffalo • Michael Jewett, Northwestern University • Melissa Knothe Tate, Case Western Reserve University • Jennifer Maynard, University of Texas at Austin • Richard Roberts, University of Southern California • Katherine S
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From page 68... ...
A scientist can fabricate a totally unique cell, either by modifying existing genomes or inventing new ones, but every generation spun off that initial engineered one always runs the risk of taking off in some other direction: evolution up to its oldest trick. So as life tends to avoid stagnation through mutation and other variability, scientists must look for other strategies for influencing and controlling cellular behavior.
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From page 69... ...
The Abiotic Approach: Cellular Radio For even greater influence over a cell, with literal push-button timing, the IDR team discussed what is known as cellular radio -- a carbon nanotube inserted into the cell and remotely controlled to create one of a few different reactions in the cell. Less than a micron long and ten nanometers wide, the radio could be designed to respond to radio signals from outside the cell -- outside the organism, even -- and thereby remotely induce heat, mechanical vibrations, or hydrolysis in a region of the cells where the tube resides.
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From page 70... ...
Calcium has different functions at different times in different cells based on the function of the cell, so this one strategy represents many possibilities in regulating cell behavior, from neurotransmitter activation to muscular contraction. Activating the nanotube in leukocytes would excite the calcium ions to stimulate an immune response; and in some stem cells and progenitor cells, triggering the calcium burst by nanotube could activate cell division.
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