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Peeping in on Dynamic All-or-None Single-Cell Chromatin Repression

March 6, 2016

Ever dream of knowing the single-cell details of chromatin regulators in real-time only to awake trapped in the static world of heterogenous cell populations? Well, dream no longer because thanks to the efforts of the Elowitz laboratory at Caltech researchers now have the ability to see just how some of our favorite epigenetic repressors (HDAC4, KRAB, DNMT3B […]

LEXY: Optogenetic Nuclear Export for Proteins Looking to Go Places

March 2, 2016

Optogenetics is one of the flashier techniques of the past decade. Instead of slow chemical or blunt physical interventions, optogenetics controls events inside cells with the timing and precision of a beam of light. Optogenetic success stories thus far include light-activated neuron firing, heart beating, organelle positioning, protein dimerization, membrane localization, gene editing, and import […]

SynNotch: A USB Cord For Cells

February 23, 2016

If synthetic biology is trying to make cells more like computers, one thing that has been sorely lacking is input-output. It’s hard to get arbitrary information about the outside environment into cells. We do have some sensors that we can modify to sense different inputs, like chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) for T-cells, but they only […]

MERA Uses a CRISPR/Cas9 Trio to Home in On Enhancers

February 4, 2016

Mapping the dark matter of the genome is no easy chore. Enhancers love to hide and often don’t act as expected. But thankfully, there’s a handy new CRISPR/Cas9 tool to fluoresce the genomes darkest regulatory secrets. The multiplexed editing regulatory assay (MERA) is a clever system that pushes back the limits of CRISPR/Cas9 as a […]

DNA Origami For Smart Membrane Channels

January 28, 2016

DNA is pretty great for a lot of reasons. There is the whole “central component of life,” of course, but DNA is also a pretty great building material. Making super-tiny, nano-scale objects seems like a really hard problem, but biology does this all the time. Life’s standard nano-brick is protein, but proteins are difficult to re-engineer, […]

Viva in vivo Gene Editing: A Roundup of the Latest CRISPR Hits

January 28, 2016

Gene editing with CRISPR/Cas9 is here, there, and everywhere. We have seen gene editing in human somatic cells, pluripotent stem cells, and even embryos. However, we should also be looking at CRISPR-based gene editing somewhere else: in a living, breathing human. The question is – where does the current technology stand on the in vivo […]

Casilio: a CRISPR/Cas9 and Pumilio Hybrid for Epigenome Editing

January 24, 2016

Life is full of challenges, and when that challenge is epigenome editing even a rock star like CRISPR/Cas9 stands to benefit from helping a hand. Epigenome editing with CRISPR/Cas9 involves using a dead Cas9 (dCas9) that confers the precision of the genome editing system without nuclease activity. The standard approach involves utilizing a fusion protein […]

A Synthetic Transcriptional Repressor That’s Anything but Plain

January 9, 2016

Synthetic gene circuits, just like electronic circuits, are built from parts that take an input, process it, and pass on an output. The toolbox of parts for gene circuits has long been limited to those found somewhere in nature, particularly when it comes to sensing an input. Typically, these systems repurpose a natural transcription factor that […]

Gene Drives: Wormholes of Biology

January 8, 2016

Gene drives have been hitting the news quite a bit lately, generating a lot of hype, hope, and some hand-wringing. They are a relatively new concept, so it’s well worth a quick road trip into gene drive history, domestication, safety, and practical challenges. Gene Drives? In essence, gene drives are the wormholes of biology. They look […]

Moving Genome Editing into the Clinic with Dr. J Keith Joung

December 29, 2015

Interview with Dr. J Keith Joung, MD, PhD at Keystone Symposia’s Precision Genome Engineering and Synthetic Biology: Designing Genomes and Pathways Moving Genome Editing into the Clinic My laboratory is focused on genome editing technologies and, more recently, on epigenome editing technologies as well. I got into this field first through protein engineering. So I was […]

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