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SUMMARY:Designable Modularity in Synthetic Biology: from New Protein Folds
  to Cellular Circuits
DTSTART:20180702T121500
DTSTAMP:20260527T120734Z
UID:095d558ea76f0d721b7c13f1a76385c1615827500a41656f2dd6928e
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Prof. Roman Jerala\, National Institute of Chemistry\, Ljublj
 ana (SLO)\nDISTINGUISHED LECTURE IN BIOLOGICAL ENGINEERING\n(sandwiches se
 rved)\n\nAbstract: \nSynthetic biology introduces engineering principles i
 nto biological or biomimetc systems. Construction of devices for a complex
  cellular environment requires orthogonal building elements with similar p
 roperties\, which may be difficult to harvest from nature and combine into
  scalable functional devices. Designable modules can be constucted in many
  variants that can be used to build complex systems. I will present applic
 ation of designable modularity for the construction of new protein folds a
 nd for the design of mammalian cell logic circuits. Orthogonal coiled-coil
  peptide dimers can be designed de novo and used for the construction of p
 rotein cages composed of a single polypeptide chain of concatenated coiled
 -coil building modules (coiled-coil protein origami - CCPO). CCPO represen
 ts a new type of protein folds not found in the nature\, where the structu
 re is defined by the order of interacting segments defining the final topo
 logy rather than by compact hydrophobic core as natural proteins. The seco
 nd generation CCPOs demonstrated that diverse designed protein polyhedra c
 an self-assemble bacterial or mammalian cells. The second type of designab
 le modules are DNA binding domains that can be used to design transcriptio
 nal regulators\, enabling construction of orthogonal genetic logic NOR gat
 es. This allowed construction of all 16 two-input logic gates and toggle s
 witches in mammalian cells. Additionally special properties of Transcripti
 on-activator like effectors for the polarized displacement were identified
  which can be used to construct new type of transcriptional regulation wit
 h advanced properties and for therapeutic applications.\n \nBio:\nDr. Rom
 an Jerala is head of the Department of Synthetic Biology and Immunology at
  the National Institute of Chemistry in Ljubljana\, Slovenia. He is also a
  full professor at the Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical technology\, Univ
 ersity of Ljubljana\, synthetic biology project director at the Centre of 
 Excellence EN-FIST and EMBO member. His research areas of interest include
  synthetic biology\, designed bionanostructures and molecular mechanism of
  innate immunity. In 2013\, his group published an article in Nature Chemi
 cal Biology on designed coiled-coil protein origami (CCPO) cages using rep
 rogrammed bacteria by synthesizing a protein that folds itself into a tetr
 ahedron measuring just 5 nanometres along each edge\, which can be used as
  container for delivering drugs on the nanoscale. That paves a path to des
 igning and producing completely new protein shapes. This work was recently
  extended by a second generation of CCPOs that are able to self-assemble i
 n vivo\, published in the Nature Biotechnology. Dr. Jerala received numero
 us awards including Pregl award by the National institute of chemistry for
  outstanding scientific achievements\, Zois award for outstanding scientif
 ic achievements (the highest national scientific award) and Medal for serv
 ices by the President of the Republic of Slovenia. He is internationally b
 est known as the leader of Slovenian teams that won the Grand prize at the
  International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition in 2010\,
  2008\, and 2006 in addition to 5 Track winner awards.
LOCATION:SV 1717 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==SV%201717
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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