Sandpit: Engineering genetically augmented polymers (GAPS)

大自然用一组少得惊人的不同积木构造出美丽而复杂的生物实体。虽然我们知道基本的构建模块是什么，但我们还没有理解它们如何在自然界中组合在一起的复杂性。利用这些知识有巨大的潜力。它不仅使我们能够模仿自然过程，如太阳能转换和氢气生产，而且我们也可以开始从生物学中获得灵感，设计和建造具有特定功能的新材料和设备。这将改变从电子到医药再到气候变化等领域。我们建议挖掘大自然的编码信息；储存在生物体DNA中的遗传信息。这些信息被非常精确地存储在DNA中，并在生长发育过程中被非常有效地转移和使用，从而赋予具有某些特征和能力的健康生物体。我们想利用这些遗传信息来规划自然系统和化学系统的相互作用。这将在新材料和设备的工程过程中提供大量的控制，因为我们可以精确地组合组件。到目前为止，此类努力一直缺乏这种精度和编程。塑料就是一个很好的例子。虽然我们很擅长制造塑料，但我们不擅长制造智能塑料，比如我们可以在智能塑料中加入生物降解性。我们的目的是把塑料的积木和蛋白质分子结合在一起，它们是自然系统的关键功能组成部分。我们将在每一种塑料中添加一小段遗传信息，这样一种塑料就能识别并粘在另一种塑料或蛋白质上。我们将使用最适合这项任务的DNA片段。基因中的DNA是双链的；一条链包含遗传密码，第二条链包含反密码，并与第一条编码链紧密相连。我们建议将一小段编码链连接到塑料上，并将相应的反编码链连接到蛋白质上，从而编程塑料和蛋白质粘在一起。编码链中可能存在的变化意味着我们可以编码许多不同的塑料和蛋白质来相互交流。这项工作将为我们提供一种全新的设计和建造材料的方法。我们将能够指导特定的生物模块以精确的方式与塑料等材料相互作用和合作。这将与我们目前日常技术的构建方式非常不同，因为我们缺乏这种编程能力。它将为药物、材料和设备的工程和制造提供组件和施工方法。

Nature constructs beautiful and complex living entities using a surprisingly small array of different building blocks. Whilst we know what the essential building blocks are, we have yet to understand the intricacy of how they are brought together and assembled in Nature. There is tremendous potential to tap into this knowledge. Not only will it enable us to mimic natural processes - such as solar energy conversion and hydrogen production - but we can also begin to take inspiration from Biology to design and construct new materials and devices with specific functions. This will transform areas from electronics to medicine to climate change. We propose to tap into Nature's coding information; the genetic information stored in an organism's DNA. The information is stored very precisely in DNA and is transferred and used very efficiently during growth and development to give healthy organisms with certain characteristics and abilities. We want to use this genetic information to programme the interaction of natural and chemical systems. This will give a great deal of control during the engineering of new materials and devices, as we can precisely combine the components. This type of precision and programming has been lacking from such endeavours thus far. Plastics provide a good example of this. Whilst we are very good at making plastics, we are not so good at making smart plastics, in which for example we can dial in bio-degradability. Our intention is to take the building blocks of plastics together with protein molecules, which are key functional components of natural systems. To each of these we will add short pieces of genetic information so that a plastic can specifically recognise and stick to another plastic, or protein. We will use segments of DNA that are perfect for this task. DNA in a gene is double stranded; one strand contains the genetic code and the second strand contains the anti-code and sticks very tightly and exactly to the first coding strand. We propose to attach a short section of coding strand to a plastic and the corresponding strand of anti-code to a protein, thus programming the plastic and protein to stick together. The variations possible in the coding strand mean we can encode many different plastics and proteins to talk to each other.This work will give us an entirely new way to design and build materials. We will be able to instruct specific biological modules to interact and cooperate in precise ways with materials like plastics. This will be very different from how our everyday technologies are currently built as we lack this programming ability. It will provide components and construction methods for the engineering and manufacture of drugs, materials and devices.