Decoding the genome’s hidden grammar

An ambitious synthetic biology project involving researchers from the Institute of Genetics and Cancer (IGC) has been awarded £5m to test a fundamental rule of life - how the information regulating complex patterns of gene expression during development is encoded in genomes.

The project, led by the University of Birmingham, integrates multidisciplinary expertise from the Universities of Edinburgh and Manchester, as well as Imperial College London, the Crick Institute and the European Bioinformatics Institute, in multi-omics, genome engineering and synthetic genomics tools. The project will also train nine early-career researchers.

Using the ability to design, write and re-write large genomic regions, the team will test how large-scale rearrangements of the genome affect gene regulation during zebrafish embryonic development.

It is one of four research projects funded as part of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council’s Strategic Longer and Larger (sLoLa) grants scheme to deepen the understanding of life’s most fundamental processes.

Professor Wendy Bickmore, Dr Shipra Bhatia and Jonathan Smith are the core team from IGC.

This funding will allow us to tackle an ambitious goal - using synthetic genomics to design, re-write and test how DNA sequence encodes the information to control genes in different cells and in different times during early development. This requires a more diverse range of skills than can be found in any one laboratory, and so it’s exciting to be able to work together with colleagues from around the UK.

The consortium is guided by a vision to train a highly skilled workforce in single-cell omics, in vivo models, synthetic biology, advanced imaging and computational modelling. The onboarded cohort of early career scientists, postdoctoral fellows, PhD students and technicians will benefit from cross-institute training and mentorship opportunities.

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