Synthetic biologists have developed a design-driven process to build complex genetic circuits for cellular engineering. The new technology utilizes computational modeling to more efficiently identify useful genetic designs before building them in the lab. Faced with myriad possibilities, modeling points researchers to designs that offer real opportunity. The researchers constructed a variety of genetic programs to carry out desired and useful functions in human cells and found the programs worked as predicted. And the designs worked the first time.

One of the most exciting frontiers in medicine is the use of living cells as therapies. Using this approach to treat cancer, for example, many patients have been cured of previously untreatable disease. These advances employ the approaches of synthetic biology, a growing field that blends tools and concepts from biology and engineering.

The new Northwestern technology uses computational modeling to more efficiently identify useful genetic designs before building them in the lab. Faced with myriad possibilities, modeling points researchers to designs that offer real opportunity.

«To engineer a cell, we first encode a desired biological function in a piece of DNA, and that DNA program is then delivered to a human cell to guide its execution of the desired function, such as activating a gene only in response to certain signals in the cell’s environment,» Leonard said. He led a team of researchers from Northwestern in collaboration with Neda Bagheri from the University of Washington for this study.

Leonard is an associate professor of chemical and biological engineering in the McCormick School of Engineering and a leading faculty member within Northwestern’s Center for Synthetic Biology. His lab is focused on using this kind of programming capability to build therapies such as engineered cells that activate the immune system, to treat cancer.

Bagheri is an associate professor of biology and chemical engineering and a Washington Research Foundation Investigator at the University of Washington Seattle. Her lab uses computational models to better understand — and subsequently control — cell decisions. Leonard and Bagheri co-advised Joseph Muldoon, a recent doctoral student and the paper’s first author.

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Materials provided by Northwestern University. Original written by Megan Fellman. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.