Team:UCL/James/Description
Project Description
BioSynthAge: Do not go gentle into that good night
We envision a time in which the human population lives a healthier life, for longer. We will use synthetic biology to ensure the ageing world population can both maintain their quality of life and extend their lifespan - increasing their ‘healthspan’. The health challenges currently posed by ageing are many and complex so we propose a suite of synthetic biology solutions to tackle these challenges. Our synthetic biology solutions will include, but not be limited to, the following:
Oxidative stress – the root of the problem
Oxidative stress underlies many of the health problems of ageing so we will develop a number of free radical mopping devices. These devices will include therapeutic bacterial chassis triggered by oxidative-stress to deliver free-radical mopping compounds. To lay a conceptual foundation for genetic tools that address ageing within human cells, we will also use gene-editing tools to map the relationship between telomerase expression and cellular robustness to oxidative stress.
