Submitted by J. Grosse on Thu, 10/09/2026 - 10:48
Mitochondrial DNA has resisted the genetic engineering revolution for around 50 years. This week, Advanced Research + Invention Agency (ARIA) is launching an ambitious effort to change that.
Professor Michal Minczuk of MRC-MBU is to lead an outstanding international team on "Programmable mitochondria (ProMiT): Comparing ways to deliver nucleic acids into mitochondria". The project has been awarded £7.7 million and is one of nineteen projects within ARIA’s Precision Mitochondria programme.
The project brings together an international team spanning the University of Cambridge (Michal Minczuk, Rita Horvath, Jelle Van Den Ameele, Michael P Murphy, David Fairen-Jimenez), University of Oxford (Molly Stevens DBE), University of Bristol (Ian Collinson), Institut Imagine (Julien Prudent), ETH Zürich (Alexander Harms), University of Copenhagen (Københavns Universitet) (Nicholas M I Taylor), and Brown University (Juan Alfonzo), combining expertise across mitochondrial biology, membrane transport, synthetic biology, chemistry, materials science, RNA biology and advanced imaging.
Mitochondrial DNA has remained much harder to engineer than nuclear DNA, in part because genetic material must cross two mitochondrial membranes before reaching the matrix where the genome resides. Rather than betting on a single technology, the team will develop and rigorously compare four very different approaches to getting genetic material into mitochondria - phage-derived delivery systems, nanoparticles, metal–organic frameworks and RNA-import mechanisms inspired by protists.
From March 2027, ProMiT will be hosted here at CIMR, further embedding the programme within Cambridge’s wider biomedical research environment.
Professor Minczuk said:
“We want to turn mitochondrial engineering into a more rigorous and predictable field, by testing very different approaches side by side using the same standards - so that success can be identified quickly, reproduced reliably and built upon with confidence.
It is a privilege to lead this outstanding international team, and I am particularly excited about working closely with researchers across the wider Precision Mitochondria programme.”