AUGMENT: Targeted upregulation of protein expression using artificial small RNA guides.

To investigate the molecular functions of proteins inside living cells, researchers need tools to manipulate the amount of a given protein. Presently, there are several tools for lowering the expression of a protein, but only a few tools to increase protein amount within physiological ranges. The vision for AUGMENT is to provide geneticists and molecular biologists with a novel and general method to selectively increase the expression of any given protein in eukaryotic cells. AUGMENT will uniquely enhance the expression of any target protein without introduction of foreign plasmid DNA into cells and thus offers a simple, cheap and controllable approach with low propensity for artefacts.