By Charlotte King

Our normal DNA sequence and the way it is read to make proteins can be altered thanks to research by Dr Jason Chin and his team.

Chin, a Cambridge University fellow, received the Francis Crick prize for his revolutionary work on the manipulation of DNA, at the Royal Society late last year.

The way that DNA is read to make proteins is crucial to life, growth and repair but what happens if the natural way of reading the code is changed to make unnatural proteins?

Normal DNA is read in a process involving large proteins within each cell, which form the proteins in the body, such as those in skin and new tissue for growth. But Chin and colleagues manipulated the genetic code and the tools that read it in order to make unnatural proteins.

They wrote a new DNA sequence and created new enzymes and machinery to direct the reading of the new sequence so that these new proteins were made.

There are many potential uses for these proteins. The main one is labeling them to study interactions within cells, to discover why certain diseases happen so new drugs can be made. There are no specific diseases in mind at present, but Chin says these are “techniques for better understanding of disease processes” and to find new drug targets, such as “growth hormones”.

The prize Chin won is in honour of Francis Crick, who was one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA. It goes to a scientist who has made developments in areas that are relevant to Crick’s area of work (molecular biology, physics and neuroscience) up until he died in 2004. The lecture delivered by Chin in November 2009 can be viewed online.

Chin’s research papers can also be viewed online.