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Updated: Jan 27, 2026

Identifying Amino Acid Overproducers Using Rare-Codon-Rich Markers
Published on: June 24, 2019
Designer membraneless organelles enable codon reassignment of selected mRNAs in eukaryotes
Christopher D Reinkemeier1,2,3, Gemma Estrada Girona3, Edward A Lemke4,2,3
1Biocentre, Departments of Biology and Chemistry, Pharmacy and Geosciences, Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Hanns-Dieter-Hüsch-Weg 15, 55128 Mainz, Germany.
Abstract:
Nature regulates interference between cellular processes-allowing more complexity of life-by confining specific functions to organelles. Inspired by this concept, we designed an artificial organelle dedicated to protein engineering. We generated a membraneless organelle to translate only one type of messenger RNA-by recruiting an RNA-targeting system, stop codon-suppression machinery, and ribosomes-by means of phase separation and spatial targeting. This enables site-specific protein engineering with a tailored noncanonical function in response to one specific codon in the entire genome only in the protein of choice. Our results demonstrate a simple yet effective approach to the generation of artificial organelles that provides a route toward customized orthogonal translation and protein engineering in semisynthetic eukaryotic cells.
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