miRNA ON-gates

Purpose

Engineer viral vectors whose payload expression turns ON in cells defined by specific microRNA environments.

Major Designs

• Sydney Pimentel: Lin28/let-7 design; successful cell-type-restricted expression in neurons, hepatocytes, and hematopoietic cells.
• Ryla Cantorgenali: IRP2-based microRNA ON-gate design; systematic but struggling.

Key Results

Sydney's Lin28/let-7 system has produced vectors green in everything but neurons and red only in neurons, with brain-organoid proof of concept and in vivo mouse-brain work underway.

Collaborators

• Andrea Brand lab: brain organoids.
• Dick Chen lab: in vivo mouse-brain studies.

Current Priority

Complete Sydney's microRNA ON-gate manuscript.

TODO

• Add construct names, target miRNAs, validation datasets, organoid imaging/scRNA-seq outputs, and in vivo study design.