The UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria), which funds high-risk, high-reward science, is spending £66 million on 19 research projects that will aim to make the mitochondrial genome programmable.
Mitochondria are often referred to as the biological cell’s powerhouse due to their key role in supplying the energy needed for cells to function. But while advances in genetic engineering over recent decades have enabled scientists to read, write and edit DNA in the cell nucleus, the same capabilities have remained elusive for mitochondrial DNA.
Aria’s new Precision Mitochondria programme will support projects located across the UK, Germany, the US, and Australia. Its ultimate goal is to demonstrate the persistent and reproducible expression of a novel gene from engineered mitochondrial DNA in an in vivo system. The organisation says that such an achievement would ‘turn mitochondria from passive targets into programmable engines of cellular function’. This could enable new therapies that re-programme mitochondria to fight disease and potentially enhance cellular capabilities.
Ryan Olf, Aria’s director for the new programme, explained that mitochondria help govern metabolism, immune signalling and cell death and are therefore the basis of many diseases related to ageing, including type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s and cancer. ‘Yet they retain their own DNA, the last in our cells that we cannot robustly engineer,’ he said. ‘So we still cannot tell which changes in mitochondrial DNA drive disease, which merely follow it, and which could be remedied.’ Having such knowledge could pave the way to make mitochondria programmable, and eventually harness machinery already embedded in the cell to detect and counter disease from within, Olf added.
Mitochondrial geneticist Hansong Ma from the University of Birmingham, who is leading one of the projects funded by the new programme, described it as ‘an exciting opportunity’ that goes far beyond disease. ‘It is about developing a new technology to control one of the fundamental components of life’, she stated.
