BioCentury
ARTICLE | Translation in Brief

A cool menthol switch for gene expression

A synthetic gene circuit uses topical menthol to switch on insulin transgene expression in engineered cells

August 8, 2019 11:28 PM UTC

ETH Zurich researchers have created a synthetic gene circuit activated by topical menthol to switch on gene expression and protein production in engineered cells. In a July Nature Medicine paper, the team used the circuit to trigger insulin production in diabetic mice.

Controlling gene expression with synthetic gene switches could be key to increasing the specificity, safety and efficacy of gene and cell therapies (see "Making Cells Compute"). ...