Vaults

8 months ago I was marveling at the mysterious vaults that abound inside our cells (link), which we still don't much about. But just because we don't really know what they are supposed to do does not mean we can't divert them for other purposes.

Yu-Kai Chao, Michelle Wu , Qiyu Gong and Fei Chen of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard developed a super clever "temporal recorder" by leveraging engineered vaults, which they call TimeVaults. TimeVaults capture mRNA through poly(A) binding protein and "store" the transcriptome living cells for over 7 days, with stability, high fidelity and minimal perturbations to the cell. This temporal recorder provides a time-based image of how a cell responds to perturbations. That's the kind of tool that can radically improve our understanding of how cells work.

The Science Magazine article is, sadly, behind a paywall (A genetically encoded device for transcriptome storage in mammalian cells, link), but Yu-Kai Chao created a great NotebookLM video: link