Zachary Z. Sun

TL;DR: The multiplex approach embraces engineering in the context of evolution by expediting the design and evolution of organisms with new and improved properties by facilitating rapid and continuous generation of a diverse set of genetic changes.

TL;DR: The preparation and execution of an efficient endogenous E. coli based transcription-translation (TX-TL) cell-free expression system that can produce equivalent amounts of protein as T7-based systems at a 98% cost reduction to similar commercial systems is described.

TL;DR: Methods to protect linear DNA strands from exonuclease degradation in an Escherichia coli based transcription-translation cell-free system (TX-TL), as well as mechanisms of degradation, are characterized and used to use linear DNA PCR products in TX-TL.

TL;DR: This work characterized in a cell-free system the ‘repressilator’, a three-node synthetic oscillator, and engineered novel three, four, and five-gene ring architectures, from characterization of circuit components to rapid analysis of complete networks.

TL;DR: This work adapts an Escherichia coli-based cell-free transcription-translation system to measure the response time of an RNA transcription cascade to be approximately five minutes per step of the cascade and uses TX-TL to prototype a new RNA network, an RNA single input module, and shows that this network temporally stages the expression of two genes in vivo.