Engineering Biology
Health & Medicine Challenge:

Address environmental threats to health, including toxins, pollution, accidents, radiation, exposure, and injury.

Develop systems to detect, identify, reverse, neutralize, and clear biochemical damage.

Engineering Biology Objectives & Technical Achievements

Prevent, reverse, or neutralize microlesions induced by toxins, radiation, and other factors.

Engineering DNA Biomolecular Engineering Host Engineering Data Science

High-fidelity production and delivery of DNA and non-coding RNAs to aid DNA damage repair.

Design robust, mutation-specific, base-editors.

Deliver synthetic repair machinery into the nucleus and mitochondria.

Design lipids and cell surface features to reverse cell membrane damage.

Induce prophylactic genetic and epigenetic states in somatic cells prior to exposure (an interesting example of this might be conditioning astronauts for space exploration).

Use data analytics and modeling to predict microlesion weak-spots (e.g., DNA, RNA, protein hotspots) to support anticipatory medical care.

Neutralization and clearance of toxic substances from the body.

Engineering DNA Biomolecular Engineering Host Engineering Data Science

Achieve highly-efficient, rapid gene editing to enable cells to detect and neutralize threats as needed.

Develop biomolecular reporters to track migration and accumulation of toxins through the body.

Generate macromolecules that neutralize and clear prions and protein plaques from the body.

Design high-affinity molecules to bind and clear toxins from the body (an interesting example of this might be a synthetic antivenom).

Generate and engineer hosts and cell-free systems that can act as bio-factories to produce anti-toxins at practical scales.

Models to predict symptoms, onset, and timing of poisoning, to inform the rational design of antidotes and treatment regimes.

Last updated: June 19, 2019 Back