Scientists may soon be able to use the most powerful force in biology, evolution, to help them explore and develop new synthetic polymers. In a recent paper published in the journal Nature Chemistry, David Liu, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University, led a research team to develop a new type of synthetic polymer that uses genetic material encoding to generate synthetic polymers. method. This method may eventually be used to evolve synthetic polymers with new properties, or to improve their performance as catalysts for chemical reactions, or to enhance their therapeutic potential.
David Liu is said to be a young professor who has never worked as a postdoctoral fellow. He graduated from Harvard University in his early years. In 1999, he studied for a doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley. Research on the cell genetic code. He was appointed as an assistant professor at Harvard University and was promoted to professor in 2004. Professor David Liu was included in the Top 100 Young Inventors (under 35) by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and "Popular Science" also listed it among the Top 10 most talented young scientists in the United States. David Liu said: "The word polymer is quite ambiguous. In biology, large molecules like DNA, RNA, and protein are the most common polymers. These polymers have some unusual characteristics. Compared Below, our ability to make artificial polymers with specific properties is more limited. Part of the reason is that we have not yet been able to evolve synthetic polymers-this is exactly the problem we want to address. "
Other researchers have tried to use the genetic code to generate synthetic polymers, but their work has been hindered because the new molecules must be similar to the genetic template that generates them.
To solve this problem, David Liu and colleagues turned to a process similar to what happened in nature.
Instead of allowing the building blocks of the new polymer to interact directly with the DNA template, the system relies on an "adapter" molecule. The researchers allowed each joint to carry a portion of the polymer, and then combined these joints with the template to form a new polymer. In the final step of this process, these joints are removed, leaving behind a synthetic polymer made from genetic material.
David Liu said: "An interesting feature of the system is that the synthetic polymer generated by this system does not need to have any structural relationship with the DNA template. The part of the system that binds to the DNA base is the linker molecule, which is completely The template is removed. The entire strategy draws heavily on protein synthesis in nature. In the process of protein synthesis, tRNA molecules are combined with a messenger RNA strand, and the amino acids they carry are connected together to form a protein. In the first place, once a newly synthesized compound is generated in a way specified by the genetic template, it can "evolve" some unique properties that cannot be designed in the laboratory based on basic principles.
David Liu gives an example, if you want to generate a synthetic molecule that enables a specific gene expression in the presence of a cancer-related protein or when glucose levels are too high. You may begin by exploring current research to find clues about how to construct such a molecule. You may use your knowledge of chemistry to set out what the molecule might look like. But for such a complex molecular goal, these efforts are just some conjectures under a good education. David Liu said that the power of evolution makes it even more likely to achieve such ambitious goals.
"The ability to bind a molecule very specifically and generate a biological reaction may not sound difficult, but it is very difficult for a polymer scientist from scratch. Compared to a simple guess How to assemble a molecule with these characteristics, evolution is a relatively powerful method. "Biology" can naturally try new things semi-randomly through millions of generations, and each generation secretly passes the molecules in the most successful strategy to The next generation. Since evolution is iterative, small advances of any generation can be inherited and developed into major successes later. "
David Liu said his next goal is to use this system to evolve synthetic polymers that can accomplish more and more complex things, starting by folding them into a structured three-dimensional shape, and then turning to combining based on biomedical or chemical interests Specific molecules, and finally analyze chemical reactions. "No synthetic polymers have really evolved yet, and we hope this system will take the first step towards achieving this goal," he said.
Such research has opened the door to reducing the manufacturing cost of a large number of drugs and compounds, and may also help scientists answer long-standing questions about the nature of life.
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