While spider silk can now be made in genetically engineered microbes, the technology C-GEM is developing could allow similar microbes to make an infinite variety of polymers blending the building blocks of silk and nylon, all of them new to chemists and with unique properties. ![]() One example, she said, would be to program the ribosome to synthesize a polymer that is a cross between spider silk - one of the toughest natural proteins - and nylon, a polymer now made in chemical reaction chambers. “The ultimate goal is to expand the function and versatility of proteins and polypeptides, as both materials and pharmaceuticals.” ![]() and Irmgard Chu Distinguished Chair in Chemistry and professor of molecular and cell biology at UC Berkeley. The tools could be applied broadly by polymer chemists, medicinal chemists and biomaterials scientists to generate bespoke materials with new functions,” said C-GEM director Alanna Schepartz, the T.Z. “C-GEM is working to biosynthesize molecules that have never before been made in a cell and that are designed to have unique properties. ![]() The papers, appearing in the journals Nature Chemistry and ACS Central Science, are the beginning of a playbook for reengineering the cellular synthetic machinery to produce never-before-seen polymers, including bio-polymers and circular polymers, which are called peptide macrocycles, with predetermined or completely unforeseen applications. Water molecules (red) and ions (blue) surround the structure. The tRNAs (red ribbons) are shown delivering novel monomers (gray spheres) to be incorporated into polymers. The region of the ribosome shown here (blue ribbons and green squiggles) are involved in forming bonds between amino acids or other monomers. The researchers performed molecular dynamics simulations on a model system based on cryo-EM studies of the structure of the E. These chains could form the basis for new bio-materials, new enzymes, even new drugs. The ultimate goal of the National Science Foundation Center for Genetically Encoded Materials (C-GEM) is to make the translation system fully programmable, so that introducing mRNA instructions into the cell along with new building blocks - not the alpha-amino acids found today - will allow the ribosome to produce an unlimited variety of new molecular chains. The $20 million research enterprise centered at the University of California, Berkeley, is now reporting significant progress toward that goal, as evidenced by three new papers that tackle three major hurdles: how to reprogram cells to supply the ribosome with building blocks other than the alpha-amino acids that make up all proteins today how to predict which building blocks make the best substrates and how to tweak the ribosome to incorporate these novel building blocks into polymers. But a multi-university group of chemists has a more ambitious goal: to retool the cell’s polypeptide manufacturing plants - the ribosomes that spin amino acids into protein - to generate polymer chains that are more elaborate than what can now be made in a cell or a test tube.
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