at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT), has developed eToeholds – small versatile devices built into RNA that enable expression of a linked protein-encoding sequence only when a cell-specific or viral RNA is present.

Now, a team of synthetic biologists and cell engineers led by James J.

This ability could significantly streamline production of the protein in the body and avoid unwanted side effects. A key challenge for researchers has been to only allow cells causing or affected by a specific disease to express the protein and not others. However, because of their structural complexity and relative stability, RNA also has attracted great attention as a valuable biomaterial that can be used to create new types of therapies, synthetic biomarkers, and, of course, potent vaccines as we have learned from the COVID-19 pandemic.ĭelivering a synthetic RNA molecule into a cell essentially instructs it to produce a desired protein, which can then carry out therapeutic, diagnostic, and other functions. RNAs are best known as the molecules that translate information encoded in genes into proteins with their myriad of activities.

Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard UniversityĮToeholds are engineered control elements that could make RNA therapeutics safer, cell therapies more effective, and enable novel forms of biodetection. I the future, eToeholds could be used to design safer and more specific RNA therapeutics, RNA diagnostics, and strategies to enrich therapeutic cell types in in vitro differentiation approaches. Eukaryotic Toeholds (eToeholds) are engineered RNA-based control elements that, as in this example, can be specifically activated by viral “trigger RNAs” to enable synthesis of a reporter protein and thus signal the presence of the virus.

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