Openhackuarium vol. 115

Designer cells are becoming ever more important in the world of synthetic biology. To be able to conveniently harness this technology, new and straightforward tools are required. In light of this, our project aims to develop an innovative CRISPR-dCas9 system in yeasts, capable of regulating genetic transcription and creating robust synthetic circuits. Our model is based around a scaffold guide RNA. This scaffold allows us to recruit transcriptional activators, repressors, and dCas9, as well as direct the complex to a given locus in the genome. In addition, the presence of both activators and repressors in our system would permit a modularity previously unseen in CRISPR-dCas9 based systems. Furthermore, we aspire to improve on Cello, a software that takes a user-given circuit and predicts a plasmid that could recreate it in vivo.