Amazing synthetic biology projects all have something in common. They need to deliver. Whether you are trying to cure a disease with a novel protein or small molecule, the last and most important step is delivering your innovations into cells. This is why we have focused on developing an innovative toolkit that utilizes Protein Nanocompartments (PNCs) in order to custom design a delivery strategy for iGEM teams and scientists that fits the needs of their projects.

Cellular delivery systems all share the same goal, to deliver cargo to a target. This cargo can be virtually anything! These may include nucleic acids such as plasmid DNA, small molecules such as chemotherapeutics, or proteins like the CRISPR-Cas9 system.

There are a wide range of cellular delivery systems available on today’s scientific markets. However, the perfect delivery system has not been developed and many of the most common technologies for cellular delivery used by the scientific community fall short.

After consulting the literature and experts in the fields of biochemistry, industry, pharmacy, and clinical research, we determined that the ideal cellular delivery system would be one that has high delivery efficiency, modular compatibility with different cargo types, specific to appropriate targets, and safe for the public and the organism of choice. We strongly believe that PNCs meet those principles and have modeled our toolkit accordingly.

Protein nanocompartments (PNCs) are a nanoscale delivery system. They are composed of proteins that self-assemble to encapsulate various forms of cargo, like nucleic acids and small molecules, and deliver their cargo to different cellular and intercellular locations. Certain PNCs are able to target where they deliver their cargo with the use of surface peptides making them not only more specific, but also more efficient and can help limit off targeting effects when using PNCs to deliver therapeutic cargo[1]. Due to their simple architecture, small size, and broad applicability, PNCs have the potential to become an extremely valuable tool for future iGEM teams and for the scientific community as well.

But where do PNCs come from? PNCs are derived from viruses. Viruses are comprised of a protein capsid, which house and transport a viral genome. In this case, the protein capsid is the PNC and the viral DNA is the cargo. However, PNCs as a cellular delivery system are not viruses! They are simply viral-inspired as they do not contain the viral genome necessary to replicate and cause harm and, in many cases, even their protein sequences have been modified for optimized delivery.