Ready for Genetically Engineered Machines? They're Alive in This Lab

As soon as DNA was sequenced, it was just a thing of time before scientists started rearranging the genetic code to build constructed lifeforms.

These Genetically Engineered Machines (GEMs) tin become anything from cells transformed into biofuel to synthetic drugs. In this emerging field, synthetic biologists work with Dna's four nucleotide bases just equally estimator programmers manipulate code.

PCMag went to UCLA's Molecular Biology Establish to interview four early career scientists engaged in molecular cloning experiments and meet their newly created glowing bacterial colonies.

In the lab, Grace Bower, Alan Chen, Winnie Liu, and Timothy Yu were surrounded by traditional instruments like glass exam tubes and adjustable gas Bunsen burners equally well equally the latest life sciences high-cease equipment and monitors charting progress. On the shelves above were bottles full of the food their bacteria samples live on (Difco LB Broth, Dextrose Anhydrous, and Bacto Yeast, in example you were curious).

UCLA's Molecular Biology Institute

In October, the group will travel to Boston alongside 6,000 other students from around the world for iGEM 2022, where they volition present joint research.

"Our projection is working with Vibrio natriegens (5. nat), a marine bacterium, which is isolated from salt marsh mud, as a new molecular chassis, just further genetic tools must be developed before its total potential tin can be reached," said Bower, a 2nd-yr Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics major.

"As the biotech field moves from the lab into industry, nosotros need more options than only E. coli, which dominates equally the main microbial model only because information technology is the most researched and convenient, and we know how it works," she explained.

"But there are trade-offs in terms of how fast E. coli grows, or how economically it utilizes various biosynthesis pathways such equally insulin production or PHB bioplastic generation, incubation temperature, issues with detail substrates, and then on. Then manufacture is asking us scientists to detect new source materials quick enough to keep up with demand and lower consumer toll," added Liu, a 2d-yr Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology major minoring in Biomedical Research.

At the moment, Due east. coli takes upward to two days to abound, but Five. nat takes one-half the time for increased poly peptide expression so information technology provides a more efficient, and better view, to analyze in the lab.

"V. nat grows really fast," Chen pointed out. "Which makes information technology very attractive for manufacture purposes. Information technology has a lot of value as a new chassis organism. Nosotros're not trying to supercede E. coli, but add to the range of bacterial strains and species that we tin can use.

"There is an incredibly diverse ready of biosynthesis pathways that one can optimize in Due east. coli so transfer to V. nat for mass product of pharmaceuticals to environmentally friendly materials, and much more," said Chen, a 4th-year Neuroscience major.

Grace Bower, Winnie Liu, Timothy Yu, Alan Chen (L-R)

"There are many ways to manipulate genetic elements and information technology'due south exciting that some of the graduate students we collaborate with accept adult a novel method of quantifying the gene expression of thousands of different Dna sequences in a single assay," said Yu, a second-year Bioengineering major. "Nosotros're harnessing that method to create a toolbox of characterized promoters in V. nat, so if someone would like to utilize information technology equally a host organism to perform a difficult procedure in metabolic engineering such as fine tuning a metabolic pathway to produce insulin or synthesizing a drug, they tin can do so at incredibly optimal efficiencies."

The team doesn't store the original samples of leaner, just elements of its modified Deoxyribonucleic acid genetic course.

"Nosotros record what we call a dynamic range, or a list of the promoters, in that 'This DNA sequence is actually stiff, this one isn't.' So when someone else comes along to build a plasmid [a genetic structure in a jail cell that can replicate independently of the chromosomes, typically a small circular DNA strand in the cytoplasm of a bacterium], they can go to our characterized library of gene sequences, find the optimum promoter for their experiment, and put that in," Bower said.

"When we become a plasmid we really like," added Chen, "We tin can store information technology at minus eighty degrees for a very long time in a glycerol stock. Then it's very stable, and so if you want to admission information technology later, it'southward all the same viable."

In fact, there's a thriving "bacteria exchange plan" between labs, where genetically modified components are stored in secure environments.

"We would like to publish peer-reviewed papers online," added Liu, "So other scientists can employ our piece of work. Simply what'south cool about competing in iGEM is that other students get early on phase exposure to a range of inspirational ideas, and might expand on those while they're still in school equally part of their graduate studies at a later date."

UCLA created its first iGEM team back in 2022, but it didn't start competing at the national level until 2022 with the Silk Genetics project, which won a gilt medal. The project was an important breakthrough because the genetically engineered silk could exist used in medical scenarios, like sutures and implants, because information technology elicits a low immune response and is biodegradable.

Chen is the only fellow member of the electric current iGEM team to have competed earlier at a national level and was function of a prior award-winning team.

"We took a project called Poly peptide Cages to iGEM in 2022," said Chen. "And won four golden medals, in several categories, for our work on self-disassembling protein cages which could be used for targeted drug delivery and would and then dismantle themselves inside the body once they reached a blood clot."

UCLA's iGEM has already attracted industry support, including financing from IDT (Integrated DNA Technologies), a significant player in CRISPR cistron editing. These are no mere student projects. The iGEM team is expanding the frontiers of scientific knowledge, despite their biological youth. We'll catch up with them in Oct to run into how they fared, and larn what other cool Genetically Engineered Machines are coming out of early on stage scientific laboratories around the globe.