Redwood-Sawyerr, Chileab;
Howe, Geoffrey;
Theodore, Andalucia Evans;
Nesbeth, Darren N;
(2024)
Genetically Encoded Trensor Circuits Report HeLa Cell Treatment with Polyplexed Plasmid DNA and Small-Molecule Transfection Modulators.
ACS Synthetic Biology
, 13
(10)
pp. 3163-3172.
10.1021/acssynbio.4c00148.
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Genetically Encoded Trensor Circuits Report HeLa Cell Treatment with Polyplexed Plasmid DNA and Small-Molecule Transfection .pdf - Published Version Download (2MB) | Preview |
Abstract
HeLa cell transfection with plasmid DNA (pDNA) is widely used to materialize biologicals and as a preclinical test of nucleic acid-based vaccine efficacy. We sought to genetically encode mammalian transfection sensor (Trensor) circuits and test their utility in HeLa cells for detecting molecules and methods for their propensity to influence transfection. We intended these Trensor circuits to be triggered if their host cell was treated with polyplexed pDNA or certain small-molecule modulators of transfection. We prioritized three promoters, implicated by others in feedback responses as cells import and process foreign material and stably integrated each into the genomes of three different cell lines, each upstream of a green fluorescent protein (GFP) open reading frame within a transgene. All three Trensor circuits showed an increase in their GFP expression when their host HeLa cells were incubated with pDNA and the degraded polyamidoamine dendrimer reagent, SuperFect. We next experimentally demonstrated the modulation of PEI-mediated HeLa cell transient transfection by four different small molecules, with Trichostatin A (TSA) showing the greatest propensity to boost transgene expression. The Trensor circuit based on the TRA2B promoter (Trensor-T) was triggered by incubation with TSA alone and not the other three small molecules. These data suggest that mammalian reporter circuits could enable low-cost, high-throughput screening to identify novel transfection methods and reagents without the need to perform actual transfections requiring costly plasmids or expensive fluorescent labels.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Genetically Encoded Trensor Circuits Report HeLa Cell Treatment with Polyplexed Plasmid DNA and Small-Molecule Transfection Modulators |
| Location: | United States |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1021/acssynbio.4c00148 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1021/acssynbio.4c00148 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society. This publication is licensed under CC-BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Keywords: | Transient transfection; sensor; HeLa; promoter; small molecule; PEI |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Biochemical Engineering |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10215289 |
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