A Toolkit for Rapid Modular Construction of Biological Circuits in Mammalian Cells

João Pedro Fonseca; Alain R. Bonny; G. Renuka Kumar; Andrew H. Ng; Jason Town; Qiu Chang Wu; Elham Aslankoohi; Susan Y. Chen; Patrick Harrigan; Lindsey C. Osimiri; Amy L. Kistler; Hana El-Samad

Viruses represent a class of naturally occurring genetic circuits that are particularly amenable to construction using the MTK due to their modular genome organization. In particular, the MTK can be relevant to speed the investigation of emerging viral agents by rapidly "booting up" their genes in a mammalian host. A key example corresponds to the filoviruses, a family of highly pathogenic genetically related viruses that includes the Ebola and Marburg viruses 24 . Infection with these agents can cause rapid onset of severe and often fatal hemorrhagic fever in humans and nonhuman primates. First identified in 1976, they remain a . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license is made available under a The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. It . https://doi.org/10.1101/506188 doi: bioRxiv preprint significant human pathogen due to their high fatality rate and periodic outbreaks. While global efforts to contain these outbreaks have resulted in fast-tracking of several experimental treatments, there is currently no approved preventive or therapeutic treatment for EBOV infections.