Model-guided sequence design for mRNA and gene therapy applications

Friday, 26 June 2026, 3pm to 4pm

Predicting the impact of cis-regulatory sequence on gene expression is a foundational challenge for biology. In this talk, I will present our work on building models that predict molecular phenotypes (e.g. transcription, translation, stability) from gene sequence. Computational models are often trained on massively parallel measurements of synthetic reporter gene activity or on genomic datasets such as genome-wide DNA accessibility. Crucially, such sequence-function models can generalize from training data to unseen sequences by learning the regulatory rules underlying the observed molecular phenotype. When combined with sequence design algorithms, models can be used to generate functional cis-regulatory sequences. We apply this approach to design enhancers that result in cell type specific gene expression, and mRNA UTR sequences that result in high levels of translation or stability and that can find applications in mRNA and gene therapy.


Short bio:
Georg Seelig is a the Chris and Heidi Stolte Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering and the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is also a group leader at the Botnar Institute of Immune Engineering in Basel. The Seelig group is interested in understanding how biological organisms process information using complex biochemical networks and how such networks can be engineered to program cellular behavior. Seelig holds a PhD in physics from the University of Geneva in Switzerland and did postdoctoral work in synthetic biology and DNA nanotechnology at Caltech. He received a Burroughs Wellcome Foundation Career Award at the Scientific Interface, an NSF Career Award, a Sloan Research Fellowship, a DARPA Young Faculty Award, an ONR Young Investigator Award and a Rozenberg Tulip Award in DNA computing among others.

Speaker(s): Professor Georg Seelig

Venue: IMS-Tetsuya Nakamura Building - IDRM Seminar Rooms 1&2 or via Teams link - IDRM Seminar Rooms 1&2 or via Teams link IMS-Tetsuya Nakamura Building Roosevelt Dr, Headington Oxford Oxfordshire OX3 7TY United Kingdom

Department: Medical Sciences (Division)

Host: Dr Fatima Dhalla

Register here: https://forms.office.com/e/4tjg9Y6frR