A revolution in the code of life

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Jason Chin has accomplished in a few years what many researchers have been anticipating for decades. His research group has restructured the production system of cells so that they can use completely new building blocks. The goal is to transform living cells into advanced factories that can produce new and improved types of polymers, which might include new materials and medicines.

This is the most robust and infallible machine known to humanity. We all have it, and even though we have known for a long time how it worked, we have not been able to discover how it could be used – until now. British researcher Jason Chin is not only the first to discover how to alter the ribosome, part of the cell’s translational apparatus, for producing the usual proteins. He has built a totally new and improved version of the ribosome for this purpose.

“Ribosomes are incredible machines inside cells that make proteins. We wondered if ribosomes could be adapted from merely producing the proteins they create in the body so that they could be used to produce new types of proteins and possibly other types of polymeric substances. We therefore decided to learn how to alter or even restructure the ribosome. Now that we have achieved this, we can potentially produce new types of materials and medicines, which may ultimately benefit people,” explains Jason Chin, Head of the Centre for Chemical and Synthetic Biology at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, and Professor of Chemistry & Chemical Biology, Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge.

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