In the March 14 2008 issue of Science, a team of UC San Francisco scientists led by SynBERC Deputy Director Wendell Lim show how a toolkit of modular molecular components and circuit boards can be used to engineer a wide variety of biochemical circuits in living cells, much as the old Heathkit electronic kits of the 1950s enabled students and hobbyists to assemble modular electronic parts into working radios and computers. “This work tells us a lot about the organization of biological circuits,” says Lim, “and how the complex and diverse molecular circuits that we find in living cells might have evolved in a rather simple stepwise manner.” Even though the circuits are fairly simple, the work has implications for engineering cells, according to Lim. “It shows that we can rationally modify cellular kinase circuits.” Full article -> (subscription required)

Figure A: Early in the electronics era, hobbyists and students used kits consisting of circuit boards and electronic components to build diverse devices.  Figure B: UCSF scientists have invented an analogous approach that may enable the custom reprogramming of cells for diverse therapeutic and biotechnological applications. In this kinase circuit, the protein labeled as “scaffold” acts as the molecular circuit board.