Computational design and development of an artificial nuclear receptor as building block for synthetic biology.

This project will reverse engineer the drug discovery process and will redesign a nuclear receptor to bind an artificial predefined ligand. Such a novel nuclear receptor will be an important building block for synthetic biology in yeast/plant systems in future applications since they are not naturally occurring in those organisms.The design of the receptor will combine both computational drug design as well as computational protein design methods. The artificial nuclear receptor system will be introduced via a bottom-up approach in a mammalian and a yeast cell line. This will deliver insights into the nuclear receptor signalling network which are complementary with the traditionally top down approach of biotechnology. This proof-of-principle project will thus both deliver a new computational approach to designing building blocks that sense the presence of a given molecule as well insights in the biology of nuclear receptor signalling.

Keywords:synthetic biology

Disciplines:Biochemistry and metabolism, Medical biochemistry and metabolism