A Panel of Protease-Responsive RNA Polymerases Respond to Biochemical Signals by Production of Defined RNA Outputs in Live Cells

J Am Chem Soc. 2015 Dec 30;137(51):15996-9. doi: 10.1021/jacs.5b10290. Epub 2015 Dec 17.

Abstract

RNA is an attractive biomolecule for biosensing and engineering applications due to its information storage capacity and ability to drive gene expression or knockdown. However, methods to link chemical signals to the production of specific RNAs are lacking. Here, we develop protease-responsive RNA polymerases (PRs) as a strategy to encode multiple specific proteolytic events in defined sequences of RNA in live mammalian cells. This work demonstrates that RNAP-based molecular recording devices can be deployed for multimodal analyses of biochemical activities or to trigger gene circuits using measured signaling events.

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • DNA-Directed RNA Polymerases / metabolism*
  • HEK293 Cells
  • Humans
  • Microscopy, Electron
  • Peptide Hydrolases / metabolism*
  • Signal Transduction*

Substances

  • DNA-Directed RNA Polymerases
  • Peptide Hydrolases