UCLA Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Professor Elisa Franco Receives Nearly $2 Million in NIH Funding to Synthesize Customizable Cell Organelles

Elisa Franco, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and bioengineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, received a $1.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to create artificial organelles using RNA from living cells.

The five-year grant from the NIH’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences will fund Franco’s research into synthesizing cell organelles using nanotechnology. Like the organs of the body, cell organelles are specialized cell subunits that carry out specific biological functions, such as filtering waste and extracting energy from food.

Specifically, Franco aims to create customizable membrane-less cell organelles called “condensates.” In living cells, condensates arise spontaneously from phase changes that separate RNA and proteins from the surrounding cytoplasm. Like other organelles, condensates perform complex functions such as moving selected proteins or responding to molecular signals. Artificial condensates could be a powerful tool for cell-level bioengineering.

Franco will work on synthesizing organelles by engineering RNA — a product of RNA-RNA interactions rather than from more unpredictable protein interactions.

A faculty member of UCLA Samueli since 2018, Franco leads the Dynamic Nucleic Acid Systems Lab, which focuses on the convergence of structural biology, dynamics and controls using specialized biomolecular frameworks. She recently co-authored a paper published in Nature Communications demonstrating how a single, nano-engineered strand of RNA can produce dense droplets of RNA within cells. Building on the research findings, Franco and her team will now attempt to use these single strands — called “RNA nanostars” for their shape — to create artificial organelles. 

The goal of Franco’s research is to create custom nanostar structures that will generate condensate organelles to accomplish specific tasks. An organelle, which visibly responds to specific molecular signals for example, could allow for more precise sensing and imaging of cell processes.

Fine-tuned artificial organelles could also manipulate the location and lifespan of certain molecules inside living cells, which could be a step toward controlling how genes are expressed.