Frontiers in Chemical Biology Seminar

Synthetic protein switches that can be controlled with user-defined inputs are powerful tools for studying and controlling dynamic cellular processes. This talk will focus on the development and use of small molecule-regulated protein switches that rely on intramolecular autoinhibition. Efforts to engineer a small molecule-regulated protein switch that rapidly and dose-dependently controls the activity of the Cas9 endonuclease will be described. Furthermore, the use of our engineered Cas9 variant to gain insight into the kinetics and dose-dependence of Cas9-mediated DNA cleavage and subsequent repair will be presented. Finally, I will describe strategies for engineering small molecule-regulated protein switches that display sophisticated behaviors.