Biocontainment/biocontrol system and methods
AssigneeRegents of the University of Minnesota
InventorsMaciej Maselko, Mike Smanski
Life of this patent
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Abstract
This disclosure describes, in one aspect, a cell that includes a biocontainment system. Generally, the biocontainment system includes a coding region whose overexpression decreases growth of the cell, a transcription regulatory region that includes a silent mutation and is operably linked upstream of the coding region, and a polynucleotide that encodes a programmable transcription activator engineered to bind to the transcription regulatory region in the absence of the silent mutation. Thus, in the absence of the silent mutation, the programmable transcription activator induces overexpression of the coding region; in the presence of the silent mutation, the programmable transcription activator does not initiate overexpression of the coding region.
Claims24
A cell of a non-human multicellular organism, the cell comprising a gene expression system that comprises:
- a coding region whose overexpression limits growth or viability of the multicellular organism;
- a transcription regulatory region operably linked upstream of the coding region, and comprising a mutation that provides synthetic incompatibility;
- and
- a polynucleotide that encodes a programmable transcription activator engineered to bind to the transcription regulatory region in the absence of the mutation, thereby overexpressing the coding region in the absence of the mutation, but does not initiate overexpression of the coding region when the transcription regulatory region comprises the mutation.
A germ cell of a non-human multicellular organism comprising:
- a coding region whose overexpression is detrimental to production, growth or viability of progeny of the multicellular organism;
- a transcription regulatory region operably linked to the coding region and comprising a mutation that provides synthetic incompatibility;
- and
- a polynucleotide engineered to encode a transcription activator that:
- (i) binds to the transcription regulatory region in a cell resulting from a cross between the multicellular organism and a second multicellular organism, wherein the second multicellular organism does not comprise the mutation that provides the synthetic incompatibility, and
- (ii) does not bind to the transcription regulatory region in a cell resulting from a cross between the multicellular organism and a second multicellular organism that comprises the synthetic incompatibility mutation.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.