Engineering of gas vesicles as ultrasound-responsive, genetically encodable protein bubbles

19th April 2023

Timing : 1 pm EST

Please use this zoom link for joining the webinar

For a list of all talks at the NanoBio seminar Series Spring'23, see here


Nanoscale biogenic objects that possess special material properties can potentially form a biological interface that complements and communicates with the synthetic material interface. In this talk, we will discuss gas vesicles, a class of submarine-shaped, gas-filled hollow protein nanostructures on the order of 100 nm in diameter. These nanoscale gas compartments can be genetically encoded and formed inside living cells. The gas-water interface strongly scatters ultrasound waves that can noninvasively reach centimeter-deep tissues. This allows the development of gas vesicles as acoustic reporter genes for imaging gene expression in deep tissues. Lastly, we will discuss recent work in understanding the biology of GVs, and how they can be modified through genetic engineering for a diverse set of biological applications.



Snow
Dr. George Lu
Assistant Professor of Bioengineering
CPRIT Scholar in Cancer Research
Rice University

George Lu obtained his Ph.D. in protein biochemistry at UC San Diego before joining the lab of Mikhail Shapiro at Caltech for his postdoctoral training. There, he focused on the engineering of gas-filled protein nanostructures for ultrasound- and MRI-based biological imaging, and his work was recognized by the Young Investigator of the Year award from the World Molecular Imaging Society. He currently leads the Lab for Synthetic Macromolecular Assemblies (SynMA) at the Department of Bioengineering at Rice University, which leverages synthetic biology and protein engineering to understand the biology and develop novel applications of gas-filled protein nanostructures. The lab is supported by NIH Pathway-to-independence and Trailblazer awards, the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT), Welch Foundation, Mathers Foundation, and Dunn Foundation.