Washington: Bioengineers have developed a new construction kit to create custom sense-and-respond circuits in human cells. This research could revolutionize treatments for complex conditions like autoimmune disease and cancer. Bioengineers at Rice University have developed a new construction kit to create custom sense-and-respond circuits in human cells. The research, published in the journal Science, represents a major breakthrough in the field of synthetic biology that could revolutionize treatments for complex conditions such as autoimmune disease and cancer.

“Imagine tiny processors inside cells made of proteins that 'decide' how to respond to specific signals like inflammation, tumor growth markers or blood sugar levels,” said Xiaoyu Yang, a graduate student in the Systems, Synthetic and Physical Biology PhD program at Rice. 'Can.” “This work brings us much closer to being able to create 'smart cells' that can detect disease signals and quickly release customizable treatments in response.” New approach to artificial cellular circuit design relies on phosphorylation. This is a natural process that cells use to respond to their environment that involves adding a phosphate group to a protein.

Phosphorylation is involved in a wide range of cellular functions, including converting extracellular signals into intracellular responses—e.g., moving, secreting a substance, responding to a pathogen, or expressing a gene. In multicellular organisms, phosphorylation -based signaling often involves a multilayered, cascading effect like falling dominoes.

Previous efforts to use this mechanism for therapeutic purposes in human cells have focused on re-engineering the original, existing signaling pathways. However, the complexity of the pathways makes them difficult to work with, so applications have been quite limited. . However, thanks to new findings from Rice researchers, phosphorylation-based innovations in “smart cell” engineering may see a significant increase in the coming years. (ANI)