SynBio
“The field of synthetic biology has the potential to deliver exciting, innovative technologies – improved chemicals, materials, medicines, environmental solutions, and even smart biological devices – converging Mother Nature with human ingenuity. Dr Gábor Balázsi is swapping silicon for DNA to create genetic circuits inside ‘programmable’ living cells. His group is using synthetic gene circuits as tools to study cell evolution, development, and cancer, paving the road for radically different DNA and RNA medicine."
— The Balázsi lab
"Using synthetic gene circuits to control protein levels in living cells, we ask: How do specific protein levels affect adaptation across vast biological scales, from individual molecules to biomolecular networks to single cells to cell populations?" (Balázsi lab)
The Balázsi lab developed a new DNA treatment against cancer cells that are drug resistant due to DNA amplification, suggesting broadly applicable therapies that might combat chemoresistance in cancer.
See: Adaptive DNA amplification of synthetic gene circuit opens a way to overcome cancer chemoresistance Y. Wan, Q Mu, R Krzysztoń, J Cohen, D Coraci, C Helenek, C Tompkins, Annie Lin, Kevin Farquhar, Erin Cross, Jiguang Wang, and Gábor Balázsi (2023) PNAS 120 (49), e2303114120
*Using synthetic gene circuits, the Balázsi lab discovered that metastatic human breast cancer cells become more, then less, and then more invasive as we tune up the levels of metastasis activator BACH1, indicating that chemical inhibitors of oncogenes can have unwanted effects.
Nonmonotone invasion landscape by noise-aware control of metastasis activator levels Y Wan, J Cohen, M Szenk, KS Farquhar, D Coraci, R Krzysztoń, J Azukas, N Van Nest, A Smashnov, Y-J Chern, D De Martino, LC Nguyen, H Bien, JJ Bravo-Cordero, C-H Chan, MR Rosner, Gábor Balázsi (2023) Nature Chem Biol 19, 887-99