Synthetic circular RNA for protein expression

Messenger RNA (mRNA) has broad potential for therapeutic and engineering applications. One fundamental limitation of mRNA is its relatively short half-life in biological systems, effected in part by rapid exonuclease-mediated degradation upon delivery. Circular RNA (circRNA), a type of single-stranded RNA with a contiguous structure that lacks the end motifs necessary for exonuclease recognition, may be resistant to this mechanism of degradation and therefore may exhibit superior stability. However, challenges in circularization, purification, and protein expression have impeded a thorough investigation of exogenous circRNA. By rationally designing ubiquitous accessory sequences to facilitate circularization, we engineered a permuted self-splicing intron that efficiently circularized RNAs up to 5kb in length in vitro.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biology

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Wesselhoeft, R. Alexander(Robert Alexander)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Daniel G. Anderson.

• Biology.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/122710

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/122710