"TimeVaults are made from mysterious cell structures called vaults, which have been modified to collect and store the molecular products of gene transcription, known as messenger RNA (mRNA) molecules. "This is a major step towards a longstanding goal in the field: being able to continuously record transcription in human cells," says Randall Platt, a biological engineer at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology in Zurich. "I anticipate that TimeVaults will allow us to observe facets of biology previously inaccessible to us.""
"Cells change constantly. Researchers tend to study their dynamics in two ways. One method is to watch them live under a microscope, where a limited number of types of molecules can be tracked for days with fluorescent tags. Another way is in test tubes at a single time point, usually the end of an experiment, where mRNA molecules can be measured and compared with those in other cells to reconstruct the past."
TimeVaults are cellular storage units engineered from natural vault organelles and modified to capture and hold messenger RNA produced by gene transcription. Existing approaches either track a few molecules in live cells with fluorescent tags or measure mRNA at a single endpoint to infer past states. CRISPR-based cell recorders create permanent genetic edits but require preselection of events to monitor. TimeVaults enable continuous, unbiased archival of transcriptional outputs in human cells, offering a method to trace how prior molecular events influence later cellular behavior and to probe mechanisms such as drug resistance and stem-cell dynamics.
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