Jörg Hartig
Engineering of designer switches for controlling protein expression in eukaryotic model organisms
In this project, novel switches of gene expression will be developed facilitating advanced studies of protein functions in proteostasis in projects A01, and A07. Ligand-dependent ribozymes will be inserted into mRNAs of interest. The modulation of ribozyme cleavage activity will allow controlling gene expression in C. elegans in collaboration with A07, and controlling RAC, Ssb, and Not4 proteins in S. cerevisiae (A01). Ultimately, these switches will be implemented via genome engineering utilizing CRISPR-Cas9. The application of ribozyme switches has significant advances for studying protein functions due to the lack of transcription factors, the utilization of native promoters, and the possibility to combine several orthogonal switches in order to independently regulate multiple target proteins at once.