DNA Click Ligation featured in the media
Earlier this year, Prof. Tom Brown’s DNA click ligation technology was featured in the pilot study for Marblar (www.marblar.com), a crowdsourcing website that aims to find uses for patented technologies. The study was successful and enough to persuade IP Group to invest £370,000 in the startup. The project has been featured in Chemistry World (http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2012/08/crowdsourcing-science-site-launch), Ars Technica (http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/06/gamification-helps-orphaned-intellectual-property-find-a-home/), Scientific American (http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/network-central/2012/07/12/what-is-marblar/), NewScientist (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528766.000-unused-inventions-get-a-crowdsourced-creative-spark.html), the Daily Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/businessclub/9404101/Marblar-aims-to-match-university-research-with-inventors.html) and Wired magazine (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/07/marblar-tech-transfer-meets-citizen-science/).
Cross-linking within nanostructures directed by triplex recognition
In a paper published in ChemComm in collaboration with David Rusling, Iris Nandhakumar and Keith Fox, we have shown that triplex recognition can be exploited to form covalent inter-strand cross-links within DNA nanostructures. This opens up the possibility of synthesizing new types of stable nanostructures.
Click triazole linkage is fully biocompatible in E. coli
A paper published this week in Nucleic Acids Res., in collaboration with Ali Tavassoli, demonstrates the full biocompatibility of a click DNA-backbone linker in a non-essential gene (the mCherry gene in E. coli). The results hint at the possibility of a fully synthetic approach to gene synthesis.