Illinois Synth was formed in January 2012 to develop, market, and license products intended to further the progress of synthetic biology. Our founding team is comprised of nine University of Illinois undergraduate students from a variety of backgrounds including bioengineering, biochemistry, molecular biology, agricultural engineering and chemical engineering. Brought together initially by the desire to work with synthetic biology in the context of the International Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) competition, we are now in the process of commercializing our research.
Illinois Synth is currently developing two product lines. The first of these product lines is a toolkit designed to facilitate the manipulation of gene expression in RNA. The toolkit of gene expression modulators (GEMs) revolves around an RNA-specific binding protein known as PUF, and aims to improve the versatility and cost efficiency of biological production systems. The PUF protein also has properties suited to the optimization of multi-step enzymatic pathways, which is the basis for our second product line. As a direct application for the RNA binding abilities of PUF, we designed an RNA scaffold with the purpose of creating an enzyme conveyer belt. While there are many enzymatic pathways that could be enhanced by such a scaffold, we propose to increase the efficiency and production of piceatannol, a compound with a variety of functions including the inhibition of fat cell formation. Our final product, the In Vivo Optimized Piceatannol Cascade (IOPiC), will combine the use of PUF-protein based gene expression modulators (GEMs) and our RNA scaffold to optimize the in vivo production pathway from resveratrol, a compound found in red wine, to piceatannol, our compound of interest.
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