Topic
Field combining molecular biology and chemistry to design, mutate, or evolve proteins and enzymes for improved or novel functions, from catalysis to biosensing.
John Innes Centre researchers engineered plant immune receptors to recognize several fungal threats at once, aimed at rice blast. Blast destroys enough rice a year to feed about 60 million people, the centre says. The receptor work itself is still experimental.
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Rice University researchers made a stable Cas13a enzyme 100-fold more sensitive by altering one region, tested on synthetic HIV RNA. The paper used a noninfectious sample; blood and environmental samples are the stated goal.
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Researchers engineered rsmiRFPnano, a photoswitchable photoacoustic probe below 19 kDa, against more than 55 kDa for bacteriophytochrome-based ones. Reporters for the NF-kB and AP-1 pathways built on it visualized acute inflammation in vivo.
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A single azatryptophan, which differs from tryptophan by one nitrogen, raised PET breakdown in an already heavily engineered hydrolase while thermal stability held. The team also built a minutes-long activity assay.
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Researchers in Denmark and Portugal engineered a bacterial enzyme that attacks commercial polyurethane foam with no pre-treatment and at mild temperature and pressure. The rate they measured sets the distance to a plant.
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Researchers report FenixS, a 17-kDa monomeric biliverdin-binding photoreceptor, and Ash1, a 6-kDa binder whose affinity for it rises more than 1,200-fold under 700-nm light in mammalian cells with no added cofactor.
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Harvard's Church lab reports AGENTEX in Nature: engineered tRNAs and ribosomes in a cell-free mix. Nobody has to recode an organism to prototype a genetic code any more.
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A Nature Biotechnology paper reports a hybridization-driven synthesis method that builds over 1,000 distinct gene fragments in a single reaction, then uses it to find PETase variants beating the standard enzyme.
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