Teaching Old RNAs New Tricks: Engineering Cellular Switches, Sensors, and Selectors

A longstanding challenge is to design molecular structures that fold and function in the crowded, complex environment of the cell.

My lab is developing methods to repurpose natural RNA structures that have the intrinsic ability to fold stably inside cells and to bind small molecule or protein ligands. These engineered RNA receptors can be used to control the cell's gene expression patterns (switches), to provide a real-time, spatially resolved read-out of metabolite or signal levels (sensors), or to evolve novel cellular function (selectors).

Speaker: Ming Hammond, UC Berkeley