Biology with a new twist: evolution and design using synthetic genetic polymers

Speaker Dr Alexander Taylor, Sir Henry Dale Fellow, Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology & Infectious Disease (CITIID), Department of Medicine, University of Cambridge

Title Biology with a new twist: evolution and design using synthetic genetic polymers

Host Julien Bergeron

 

Abstract On Earth, life’s genetic material is made from a relatively small chemistry set, but synthetic biology has revealed that a range of alternative polymers beyond DNA and RNA can support heredity and evolution: Xeno-nucleic acids (XNAs) are artificial chemical analogues that can overcome some of the limitations of DNA or RNA (e.g. poor biostability, immunogenicity) to enable new generations of nucleic acid technologies for applications in research and biomedicine. In this talk, I will describe the evolution and engineering of artificial structures and catalysts (XNAzymes) into a series of highly specific RNA-cleaving enzymes capable of targeting disease-associated RNAs with single-nucleotide precision including oncogene mRNAs, non-coding RNAs and the genome of SARS-CoV-2.