Parisa Hosseinzadeh, an assistant professor of bioengineering at the Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact, has received a $400,000 award to support her research in synthetic biology and protein engineering. The award comes from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), part of the U.S. Department of Defense, through its Generative Optogenetics (GO) program, a high-risk, high-reward research effort aimed at redefining how genetic information is delivered to living cells.
The GO program works to overcome longstanding limitations in DNA and RNA synthesis. Current methods rely on physically delivering genetic material into cells, a process that's often slow, costly, hard to scale, and limited in the length of sequences it can handle. GO hopes to remove these barriers by developing a protein-based system that works inside living cells and builds nucleic acids on demand, triggered by light, providing researchers precise control over cellular behavior.
Hosseinzadeh’s project focuses on developing a "nucleic acid compiler" (NAC): a protein complex designed to be expressed inside living cells that can synthesize DNA or RNA sequences directly in response to light.
"We are hopeful this could one day change how we think about delivering genetic therapies, moving away from physically injecting DNA or RNA and toward systems where a cell can generate what's needed, controlled by light,” said Hosseinzadeh.
In collaboration between Tobias Giessen at the University of Michigan, Mary Dunlop at Boston University, and Stephen Kassinger and Gus Lang at Conveyor Belt Industries, the Hosseinzadeh lab will use an engineered bacterial protein to shield the growing RNA strand and system from molecules that would otherwise break it down. These proteins, called encapsulins, occur naturally in many different bacteria and can already be expressed in plants, yeast, and other eukaryotic cells, providing a flexible foundation that could later be adapted to a wide range of host organisms.
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July 1, 2026