Ron Weiss

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  Mammalian Synthetic Biology: Engineering Sophisticated Gene Regulation for Therapeutic Systems
  Ron Weiss

  Synthetic biology is revolutionizing how we conceptualize and approach the engineering of biological systems. Recent advances in the field are allowing us to expand beyond the construction and analysis of small gene networks towards the implementation of complex multicellular systems with a variety of applications. In this talk I will describe our integrated computational / experimental approach to engineering complex behavior in mammalian cells. In our research, we appropriate design principles from electrical engineering and other established fields. These principles include abstraction, standardization, modularity, and computer aided design. But we also spend considerable effort towards understanding what makes synthetic biology different from all other existing engineering disciplines and discovering new design and construction rules that are effective for this unique discipline. We will discuss experimental results with synthetic biology building blocks for intracellular sensing, processing, and actuation in mammalian cells. We will then present a genetic circuit that can detect and destroy specific cancer cells based on the presence or absence or specific biomarkers in the cell. We will also discuss preliminary experimental results for obtaining precise spatiotemporal control over stem cell differentiation for tissue engineering applications. Finally, we will discuss a new framework for creating regulatory circuits based strictly on protein-protein interactions. These protein-phosphorylation based circuits operate at much faster speeds than existing transcriptional and translational based systems, with the ability to respond to a stimulus within a few seconds, thereby creating opportunities for new synthetic biology capabilities and applications.