Designing and using RNA scaffolds to assemble proteins in vivo

RNA scaffolds are synthetic noncoding RNA molecules with engineered 3D folding harnessed to spatially organize proteins in vivo. Here we provide a protocol to design, express and characterize RNA scaffolds and their cognate proteins within 1 month. The RNA scaffold designs described here are based on either monomeric or multimeric units harboring RNA aptamers as … Read more

A Programmable Dual-RNA–Guided DNA Endonuclease in Adaptive Bacterial Immunity

Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated (Cas) systems provide bacteria and archaea with adaptive immunity against viruses and plasmids by using CRISPR RNAs (crRNAs) to guide the silencing of invading nucleic acids. We show here that in a subset of these systems, the mature crRNA that is base-paired to trans-activating crRNA (tracrRNA) forms a … Read more

Apps Collections for Synthetic Biology

 

Synthetic biology which is inspired by “plug-and-play” concept is supported by standardized biobricks and also computational tools for analysis and optimization [1]. Here are bio-apps collections for you. Personally Tinkercell and UNAFold are mostly used.

Circuit design and simulation
 Biojade http://web.mit.edu/jagoler/www/biojade/
 Tinkercell http://www.tinkercell.com/Home
 Asmparts http://soft.synth-bio.org/asmparts.html
 ProMoT http://www.mpimagdeburg.mpg.de/projects/promot
 GenoCAD http://www.genocad.org/genocad/
 GEC http://research.microsoft.com/gec
 TABASCO http://openwetware.org/wiki/TABASCO#TabascoSimulator
 Hy3S http://hysss.sourceforge.net/index.shtml
Circuit optimization
 Genetdes http://soft.synth-bio.org/genetdes.html
 RoVerGeNe http://iasi.bu.edu/∼batt/rovergene/rovergene.htm
DNA and RNA design
 Gene Designer https://www.dna20.com/index.php?pageID=220
 GeneDesign http://www.genedesign.org
 UNAFold http://www.bioinfo.rpi.edu/applications/hybrid/download.php
 mfold http://mfold.bioinfo.rpi.edu/download/
 DINAMelt http://dinamelt.bioinfo.rpi.edu/
 Vienna RNA package http://www.tbi.univie.ac.at/∼ivo/RNA/
 Vienna RNA web servers http://rna.tbi.univie.ac.at/
 Zinc Finger Tools http://www.scripps.edu/mb/barbas/zfdesign/zfdesignhome.php
Protein design
 Rosetta http://www.rosettacommons.org/main.html
 RAPTOR http://www.bioinformaticssolutions.com/products/raptor/index.php
 HHpred http://toolkit.lmb.uni-muenchen.de/hhpred
 Modeler http://salilab.org/modeller/
 PFP http://dragon.bio.purdue.edu/pfp/
 Autodock 4.2 http://autodock.scripps.edu/
 HEX 5.1 http://webloria.loria.fr/∼ritchied/hex/
Integrated workflows
 SynBioSS http://synbioss.sourceforge.net/
 Clotho http://biocad-server.eecs.berkeley.edu/wiki/index.php/Tools
 Biskit http://biskit.sf.net

 

Suggested pages listing useful bio-apps maybe you will like in synthetic biology research:

  1. WikiGenes Toolbox ( http://www.wikigenes.org/e/art/e/187.html). As a free on-line tutorial edited by people all around the world, WikiGenes has spirits of Linux: open-source, sharing, interest, so is WikiGenes-Synthetic-Biology page. It enables you fast-learn what is synthetic life.
  2. OpenWetWare (http://openwetware.org/wiki/Computational_Tools).
  3. JCVI (http://www.jcvi.org/cms/research/software/#c614). This page is from J. Craig Venter Institute.

 

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[1] Marchisio, M. A., & Stelling, J. (2009). Computational design tools for synthetic biology. Current Opinion in Biotechnology, 20(4), 479-485. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0958166909001001

RNA switch — Witch

After my vacation in Taiwan this winter, I’ve returned and found an interesting paper [1] , out of thousands of RSS feeds in my google reader. This paper comes from Christina Smolke‘s lab, and I’ve confess that sometimes I cannot help hating her, because of the outstanding researches to make the promising RNA device alive. … Read more

Uploaded and Uploading to SynBio world

Synthetic Biology, an emerging interdisciplinary field, is building up a bridge to get biologists and engineers collaborated widely, science and technology merged tightly, dreams and reality synchronized fully. There are countless fascinating projects and ideas in SynBio world which are supposed to have great implication to our real world and of course, one cannot depict … Read more