Synthetic Biology Takes on Zika

Abstract

By the time public health officials implement infrastructure to deal with an outbreak, the threat has often passed. This could change with innovation on a new diagnostic work flow and platform designed by Jim Collins, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Many innovators develop a novel assay and stop there. When Collins, a design thinker, explores a new novel assay, he likes to think about how the whole process could improve. Collins' technology uses synthetic biology to design sequence-specific sensors and develop an environment-proof protein expression platform that can rapidly deployed to the field. The journal spoke with Collins about his application toward a field-ready Zika diagnostic. Zika is a flavivirus—an RNA virus family that also includes famous members such as dengue, yellow fever, and West Nile. Which means a simple antibody test to detect Zika would show cross reactivity with others in its family. Collins and colleagues strove to develop a test that would eliminate such cross reactivity—plus, one that does not carry the cost and complexity of PCR. Jim Collins The workhorse of the system is the toehold switch, a programmable RNA sensor (1) that …