Synthetic biology for translational research.

Synthetic biology involves the engineering of proteins, signaling pathways and even whole organisms using modular designs and formats. A major tool of synthetic biology is artificial gene synthesis, which provides a direct means from a conceptualized DNA sequence to the corresponding physical DNA for the construction of a variety of biological components. To date, synthetic biology has often been used to answer fundamental questions in basic research, but now is poised to greatly enhance translational research. In this review, we discuss several translational applications of synthetic biology including the construction of novel diagnostics and vaccines, development of new synthetic pathways for drug screening and biosynthesis, and the creation of engineered viruses and microbes to fight human disease. Together these and other novel translational applications of artificial gene synthesis and synthetic biology have the opportunity to make major advances for improving human health.

Anti-cytokine autoantibodies are associated with opportunistic infection in patients with thymic neoplasia.

Patients with thymic malignancy have high rates of autoimmunity leading to a variety of autoimmune diseases, most commonly myasthenia gravis caused by anti-acetylcholine receptor autoantibodies. High rates of autoantibodies to cytokines have also been described, although prevalence, spectrum, and functionality of these anti-cytokine autoantibodies are poorly defined. To better understand the presence and function of anti-cytokine autoantibodies, we created a luciferase immunoprecipitation system panel to search for autoantibodies against 39 different cytokines and examined plasma from controls (n = 30) and patients with thymic neoplasia (n = 17). In this screen, our patients showed statistically elevated, but highly heterogeneous immunoreactivity against 16 of the 39 cytokines. Some patients showed autoantibodies to multiple cytokines. Functional testing proved that autoantibodies directed against interferon-α, interferon-ß, interleukin-1α (IL-1α), IL-12p35, IL-12p40, and IL-17A had biologic blocking activity in vitro. All patients with opportunistic infection showed multiple anti-cytokine autoantibodies (range 3-11), suggesting that anti-cytokine autoantibodies may be important in the pathogenesis of opportunistic infections in patients with thymic malignancy. This study was registered at http://clinicaltrials.gov as NCT00001355.

Antibody profiling by Luciferase Immunoprecipitation Systems (LIPS).

Technologies for comprehensively understanding and quantifying antibody profiles to autoantigens and infectious agents may yield new insights into disease mechanisms and may elucidate new markers to substratify disease with different clinical features and better understand pathogenesis. We have developed a highly quantitative method called Luciferase Immunoprecipitation Systems (LIPS) for profiling patient sera antibody responses to autoantigens and pathogen antigens associated with infection. Unlike ELISAs, the highly sensitive LIPS is easily implemented to survey humoral serological response profiles to different antigens in a universal format and produces dynamic antibody titer ranges up to 6 log(10) for some antigens. In these studies, quantitative profiling by LIPS of patient humoral responses against panels of antigens or even the entire proteome of some pathogens (i.e. HIV), is typically more informative than testing a single antigen by ELISA. In addition, LIPS also eliminates time and effort needed to produce highly purified antigens as well as the labor-intensive assay optimization steps needed for standard ELISAs. Here we provide a detailed protocol describing the technical aspects of performing LIPS assays for readily profiling antibody responses to single or multiple antigens.