Changing social trends and creative timetables are making it more likely for students to stay at home while they study. Is campus life on the way out?

Spatial and temporal organisation of membrane-associated components is fundamental to cellular signalling, yet remains difficult to engineer in minimal synthetic systems. In synthetic cells, DNA and R...

Membrane-associated proteins and nucleic acids are transforming synthetic cell communication, unlocking applications in biosensing, therapeutics, and tissue engineering. This review explores how thes....

March 13 2022 4/24/23 5/8/24 5/13/26 CALENDAR 2027

Nucleoside analogs (NAs) are essential as antiviral and anticancer therapies. Despite decades of focused medicinal chemistry efforts, their related chemical space remains underexplored, mainly due to ...

ALT: a man is holding a green sword in a forest while another man watches .

The UCLB pharmaceutical spinout, EpilepsyGTx which is developing new treatments for refractory epilepsy, has raised $33 million USD (£24.78 million) in Series A funding to bring its gene therapy to cl...

Abstract. c-Myc is an oncogene that is dysregulated in ∼70% of cancers. Its multifaceted function complicates effective drug targeting of the protein. i-Mo

Mixtures of peptides and nucleic acids tend to demix and form coacervate droplets. Here, the authors show that even short peptides and oligonucleotides form droplets. DNA and RNA impart different prop...

Bacterial ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters can be utilized and engineered to transport non-canonical amino acids into Escherichia coli for highly efficient synthesis of proteins with novel func...

Magdalene College is deeply saddened to announce the death of Professor Sir John Gurdon FRS, who served as Master of the College from 1995 to 2002.

A study by British researchers opens up new possibilities for engineering cell mimics as drug delivery systems

London SynBio afterwork talks and networking event on Thursday 25th of September

The programmability of synthetic cells facilitates their application as drug delivery devices, but on-demand biosynthesis and release of cargo using a tissue-penetrating stimuli remains a challenge. N...

Labeling the plasma membrane for advanced imaging remains a significant challenge. For time-lapse live cell imaging, probe internalization and photobleaching are major limitations affecting most membr...

RNA-cleaving olignucleotide catalysts composed of DNA and/or nucleic acid analogues (DNAzymes, modified DNAzymes and XNAzymes) are promising agents for specific knockdown of disease-associated RNAs. H...

Biological cells use cations as signaling messengers to regulate a variety of responses. Linking cations to the functionality of synthetic membranes is thus crucial to engineering advanced biomimetic agents such as synthetic cells. Here, we introduce bioinspired DNA-based receptors that exploit noncanonical G-quadruplexes for cation-actuated structural and functional responses in synthetic lipid membranes. Membrane confinement grants cation-dependent control over receptor assembly and, when supplemented with hemin cofactors, their peroxidase DNAzyme activity. Cation-mediated control extends to receptor lateral distribution to localize DNA-based catalysis within phase-separated membrane domains of model synthetic cells, imitating the localization of multimeric membrane complexes to signaling hubs in living cells. Our modular strategy paves the way for engineering from the bottom-up cation-responsive pathways for sensing, signaling, and communication in synthetic cellular systems.