Biomedicine: Can the Cell Nucleus Serve as a Blueprint for Future Microchips?
Computer chips today play a key role in nearly all spheres of everyday life. When used in modern technologies, they control the function of household appliances, coordinate systems in vehicles, and enable operation of mobiles and laptops. A similar principle is applied in biological organisms: Their computer chip is the DNA in the cell’s nucleus. Researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) are working to develop a better understanding of these DNA-based information systems to control biotechnological and biomedical applications in future.
With his research group “Computational Architectures in the Cell Nucleus” at KIT’s Institute of Biological and Chemical Systems, Professor Lennart Hilbert investigates how the processes in the cell nucleus work. The aim is to develop DNA-based hardware for the future. “We know that each of our cells is an information system that uses the DNA as a central data storage medium. We want to understand these systems designed by evolution, learn from nature, and copy the way they work. With this knowledge, we would be able to recreate the same functions in less complex systems,” Hilbert explains.
At the moment, however, there are no satisfactory options to use chips in biomedical technology. New DNA-based hardware would follow physical principles that are significantly different from electronic hardware, the systems biologist says. Information processing, for example, would take place in a liquid medium instead of a static architecture.
Issue 2024/4 of the lookKIT research magazine deals with the search for new findings.
To the magazineThe Cell Nucleus: Known for Decades, but Not Yet Decoded
The exact structure of the cell nucleus has been known to scientists for decades. It stores and administrates parallel access to more than a gigabyte of DNA-encoded information. Processes based on genetic information are completely integrated in the cell function. “We can see very reliable patterns. Through our fundamental research, we are trying to find out how exactly this architecture serves the cell,” says Hilbert.
The researchers assume that targeted reading of information is linked to the three-dimensional organization of the DNA in the cell nucleus. Some regions of the genome are unfolded, others compressed. This adaptive 3D organization of the DNA might be of central importance to effective information processing in the cell nucleus. Hilbert’s team is investigating the physical principles underlying this 3D organization and how it controls access to regulatory factors. For their work, the researchers experiment with the cells of vertebrates, using high-resolution microscopy as well as computer simulations and physical modeling.
Collaboration across Disciplines Makes KIT an Ideal Work Environment
Above all, the research group benefits from the interdisciplinary environment at KIT, Hilbert underscores. The team is given sufficient time and resources for fundamental research into biological systems. KIT offers an ideal environment for the team to develop a technology and transfer their findings to practice.
“We can integrate and also serve many other research disciplines. In particular, optics and photonics. Any new microscope from there and any new manipulation technique means progress for us. Collaboration with biotechnology is crucial to our experiments. And we profit from KIT’s institutes offering advanced data analysis, machine learning, and artificial intelligence options,” Hilbert adds. The possibility to use KIT’s high-performance computer is extremely valuable, he emphasizes.
Hope for Cancer Therapy?
According to the scientist, their research could pave the road for innovative approaches in cancer therapy. “There are cancer therapies where the patients’ own immune cells are programmed in such a way that they can recognize and specifically attack certain surface proteins of cancer cells.” At the moment, programming one or two target proteins in cells is a big effort. With an intelligently programmable immunotherapy, it could be possible to store 100 target proteins in a single immune cell. Depending on the stage of tumor development, this therapy could be used to fight the tumor and even be able to react to resistance. “Using the injected DNA microchips, tumor progression might be determined from a blood sample and therapy adapted accordingly. This would enable a programmable therapy that can cope with such a complex system as a developing tumor,” Hilbert explains.
The researchers are aware of the fact that work with DNA raises ethical issues. According to Hilbert, the ethically unauthorized modification of children’s genetic material rightfully is an absolute taboo in genetics. But Hilbert also points out that new technologies might help to prevent hereditary diseases in future and make life easier for the individuals affected.
Heike Marburger, December 16, 2024
Translation: Dipl.-Übers. univ. Maike Schröder
