ERC Advanced Grant for RNA-based nanorobots
Associate Professor Ebbe Sloth Andersen has been awarded the prestigious European Research Council Advanced Grant for developing RNA-based nanorobots for controlling biological cells to improve biotechnological production.
The European Research Council Advanced Grant is amongst the EU’s most prestigious and competitive, providing leading senior researchers with the opportunity to pursue ambitious, curiosity-driven projects that could lead to major scientific breakthroughs.
Andersen has received the grant for his project called "RIBOTICS: RNA Origami Technology in Cell Systems" from the panel of "Biotechnology and Biosystems Engineering". The project builds on the RNA origami method that was developed in his lab but now aims to take the technology to the next level with the ambitious goal of controlling the biological cell.
With the RIBOTICS project, Andersen aims at developing so-called "RNA origami robots" that can sense, compute, and actuate functions inside the living cell. The project builds on a recent paper from the Andersen lab, where they have succeeded in developing the first example of an RNA origami robot that senses RNA strands, computes a Boolean AND gate, and actuates fluorescence (see illustration and read the paper from Science Advances here).
The hypothesis of the project is that the robotic concept can be generally applied to control a variety of biological processes in the cell such as transcription, translation, and localization. “The project will implement the RNA-based control systems in S. cerevisiae yeast, since it is widely used for production of proteins and valuable chemicals in the biotech industry” Andersen explains.
To achieve this goal, the project will use advanced methods in computational design of biomolecular function, cryo-electron microscopy and tomography for characterizing molecular structures individually and in the context of the cell, molecular cloning in yeast for construction of multi-component systems, chemically modified RNA for stable biosensing, and microfluidic technology for screening of yeast production strains.
If successful, the project will provide a better understanding of the design principles for biomolecular function and provide a general platform for the development of RNA robot and circuit technology in cell systems for broad applications in biotechnology and medicine.
Contact information
Associate Professor Ebbe Sloth Andersen
Aarhus University
Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center (iNANO) and Department of Molecular Biology & Genetics
E-mail: esa@inano.au.dk