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Presented By: Biomedical Engineering

Programmable Protein Circuits in Living Cells: Design and Delivery

BME Seminar Series: Xiaojing Gao, Ph.D. - Caltech University

Biomedical Engineering Biomedical Engineering
Biomedical Engineering
Cells use circuits of interacting molecules to sense, process, and respond to signals. In mammalian synthetic biology, we try to emulate that with synthetic molecular circuits and program new cellular functions, which holds great promise for basic research and biomedicine. Synthetic circuits have largely relied on gene regulation and especially transcriptional control. However, many natural pathways operate at the post-translational level, and synthetic protein circuits could offer advantages such as faster operation, direct coupling to more signaling pathways, and compact encoding on a single transcript. Having already engineered proteases into building blocks for protein circuits, I will continue to perfect the platform in four key directions. I will establish more sensors that transduce diverse endogenous inputs into protease activity, enhance the signal processing power of my protease circuits, develop an accompanying RNA viral vector for safe and non-mutagenic delivery where protease circuits serve as both the "driver" and the "passenger", and validate and optimize my therapeutic circuits in more cancer-relevant models. I envision a general-purpose platform (i.e., “programming language”) for the rational design, robust implementation, and safe delivery of mammalian synthetic circuits that will facilitate both basic research and biomedical applications.

Xiaojing Gao, Ph.D., is a Helen Hay Whitney Foundation/HHMI Postdoctoral Fellow at Caltech University
Biomedical Engineering Biomedical Engineering
Biomedical Engineering

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