Building a self-replicating biochemical system remains a challenge in synthetic biology. Here the authors demonstrate that the cell-free protein synthesis PURE system can be reconstituted from protein...

The emergence of a chemical system capable of self-replication and evolution is a critical event in the origin of life. RNA polymerase ribozymes can replicate RNA, but their large size and structural ...

We present a high-throughput selection system to engineer fluoroacetate dehalogenases (FAcDs). By challenging E. coli populations that produce diverse FAcD libraries to grow on non-natural organofluo....

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

Unexpected stoichiometries in E. coli ABC importers reveal design principles linking protein abundance to transporter function.

Plasmids exhibit a broad range of sizes and copies per cell, and these two parameters appear to be negatively correlated. Here, Ramiro-Martínez et al. analyse the copy number of thousands of diverse b...

Promoters are DNA sequences that help to initiate transcription. Point mutations can create de-novo promoters, which can consequently transcribe inactive genes or create novel transcripts. We know lit...

Uncurbed exponential proliferation might not always be required for genetically modified microorganisms, and might even cause unpredictable liabilities in their behavior and impact. We therefore const...

Systems that perform continuous hypermutation of designated genes without compromising the integrity of the host genome can substantially accelerate the evolution of new or enhanced protein functions....

The ribosomal incorporation of backbone-modified amino acid analogs into peptides and proteins enables the programmed synthesis of sequence-defined biopolymers with tunable properties. However, the su...

All cells require a continuous supply of the universal energy currency, adenosine triphosphate (ATP), to drive countless cellular reactions. The universally conserved F1Fo-ATP synthase regenerates ATP...

An in vitro system is capable of sustainably regenerating 20 aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases toward artificial cells.

Ochre, a strain of Escherichia coli engineered to have a single stop codon, enables reassignment of four codons for non-degenerate functions, such as incorporation of non-standard amino acids into pro...

It is widely believed that due to nutrient limitations in natural environments, bacteria spend most of their life in non-growing states. However, very little is known about how bacteria change their p...

An overview of cytosine and adenine base transition editors, which make precise changes in DNA bases without causing double-strand breaks.

We report the construction of an alternative protein priming system to recode genetic translation in Escherichia coli by designing, through trial and error, a chimeric initiator whose sequence identit...

Bacteria in nature encounter substrates at widely varying concentrations, yet studies of bacterial physiology have focused more on nutrient type than concentration, partly due to challenges in maintai...

Bacteriophages are the most abundant and phylogenetically diverse biological entities on Earth, yet the ecological mechanisms that sustain this extraordinary diversity remain unclear. In this study, w...

Applications are now open. The Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe and the University of Cambridge are committed to widening participation in postgraduate students at the University of Cambridg...

Just add water

Precise, stringent, post-translational activation of enzymes is essential for many synthetic biology applications. For example, even a few intracellular molecules of unregulated T7 RNA polymerase can ...

Multidrug-resistant infections are becoming increasingly prevalent worldwide. One of the fastest-emerging alternative and adjuvant therapies being proposed is phage therapy. Naturally isolated phages ...