Scientists Crack the Code to Protein Self-Assembly

If news stories pertaining to pharmaceutical drugs have got you down, here's something to perk you up: Duke University scientists have successfully hacked the genetic code controlling how and when proteins self-assemble and disassemble. It's a huge step forward for designer proteins, synthetic biology, and a whole host of other future-minded pieces of medical research. Perhaps most importantly, these findings may result in new and effective ways to deliver drugs to vital areas within the body.

It's now possible for medical researchers to emulate computer programmers in construction, manipulation, and execution of code — except in this case, we're talking genetic coding rather than digital.

The researchers' study, which appears in this month's Nature, details the many possible environmental stimuli that result in protein assembly and disassembly, and then demonstrates that the researchers have learned to replicate them in a lab. For example, the researchers have pinned down the complex relationship between protein structures and heat.

If you wrap medicine in a protein shell and heat it just right, you can control when and where in the body that shell will give way and the medicine will be delivered. The shell become more than just a shell; it becomes a "bioactive component" of the drug, according to Ashutosh Chilkoti, chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Duke.

In what other ways can we expect human health research to take big steps forward? Dr. Francois Nader on what the amazing things the future brings:

It's now possible for medical researchers to emulate computer programmers in construction, manipulation, and execution of code — except in this case, we're talking genetic coding rather than digital. Input the correct specs, flip a switch, and the proteins assemble or disassemble themselves. This degree of control is unprecedented and should lead to a host of new discoveries and innovations in the years to come.
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Read more at Science Daily.


ORIGINAL: Big Think
by ROBERT MONTENEGRO

Robert Montenegro is a writer, playwright, and dramaturg who lives in Washington DC. His beats include the following: tech, history, sports, geography, culture, and whatever Elon Musk has said on Twitter over the past couple days. He is a graduate of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.You can follow him on Twitter at @Monteneggroll and visit his po'dunk website at robertmontenegro.com.

Sensors You Can Swallow Could Be Made of Nutrients and Powered by Stomach Acid

Illustration: Bettinger Group/CMU

The future of ingestible sensors could be a cross between silicon-based circuitry and biodegradable materials, with batteries made of nutrients and running on stomach juices.

That, at least, is the vision of Christopher Bettinger, assistant professor of materials science and biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. His group is working on edible electronics and ways to power them. Ingestible sensors could provide a gut check for early signs on bacterial infection, look for symptoms of gastrointestinal disorders such as Crohn’s Disease, monitor uptake of medications, and even study the microbiome living inside people.“I think a lot of people hand-wave powering these devices through external RF, but bodies are a pretty good Faraday cage—Christopher Bettinger, Carnegie Mellon University

Some ingestible sensors, such as a clear pill containing a camera to examine the GI tracts up close, already exist, but they carry a risk of getting stuck and requiring surgery to remove. And researchers are working on devices made from biocompatible materials such as gelatin and indigo. Bettinger thinks the trick is to make the logic circuits out of silicon, taking advantage of the sophistication of that technology, but to encapsulate them in, say, a biodegradable hydrogel that can squeeze through tight openings. The other parts, such as antennas and batteries, would be made from organic and other bio-safe materials.

“If you really want to use these in a clinical setting, we think silicon is pretty good,” says Bettinger, who authored a review article on next-generation devices in the latest issue of Trends in Biotechnology.

One of the main issues is how to supply the sensors with power. “I think a lot of people hand-wave powering these devices through external RF,” he says, “but bodies are a pretty good Faraday cage,” which would prevent radio frequency energy from reaching the sensors. His team has built a battery with a cathode made of melanin—the pigment that colors hair and skin—and an anode made of manganese oxide, a form of a mineral that plays a role in nerve function. The battery has an open design, so that when it hits the stomach, gastrointestinal fluids act as the electrolyte and transport current, much the way the emergency lights of life vests light up when they’re dropped in ocean water. In lab tests, it provided 5 milliwatts of power for up to 20 hours. 

Various minerals, such as manganese, magnesium, and copper are considered essential nutrients, and could be used to build electronics in amounts smaller than the U.S. Food and Drug Administration “Recommended Daily Allowance”, which should help convince that agency of their safety, Bettinger says. “We think we can go to FDA and say, ‘here’s a battery compound of things that are already in our bodies, plus water,’” he explains. Even silicon, if it interacts with the body, can turn into silicic acid, which has some health benefits.

As for the melanin, Bettinger says, “there’s already more melanin in a serving of squid-ink pasta than will be in our batteries.”

The vision of edible electronics may not be far in the future. Proteus Digital Health, of Redwood Shores, Calif., already makes an ingestible sensor that sends data to a patch worn on the skin. Earlier this month they and Otsuka Pharmaceutical, of Tokyo, Japan, filed an application with the FDA for the first combination of a drug with a smart pill. Then hope to sell a pill of Abilify, a drug for mental disorders, with the Proteus sensor embedded within it to monitor drug uptake.

ORIGINAL: IEEE Spectrum

By Neil Savage

Posted 21 Sep 2015