Cells are exquisite sensing ‘machines’ that continuously monitor their environment for signals. These signals dictate cell differentiation, division and/or biological function, with major implications in health and disease. Unfortunately, there is no ‘recording’ left behind to correlate a cell’s past with its current state.
Very recently, genome engineering technologies based on CRISPR and Prime Editing have enabled cells to record biological processes into their DNA, so-called ‘cell recorders’ (Choi, Nature 2022). However, they are currently limited in the frequency and amount of information that can be recorded over time.
In this project, a novel synthetic biology approach is optimised to overcome these limitations using sequential insertion of DNA barcodes (produced in response to cellular events) into a defined locus. This creates a continuous DNA record of expression of multiple genes over time, that is inherited across cellular generations, and that can be read out via sequencing.
This technology is anticipated to become a powerful synthetic biology tool for patient monitoring, disease prediction, and basic science. This project suits someone with strong interests in synthetic biology, protein engineering, molecular biology and DNA sequencing.