CANCELLED

"Imaging tools and technologies inspired by nature’s light-emitting chemistry"

Imaging tools enable researchers to spy on cells and biomolecules and track their behaviors in real time.  While powerful, many of these probes are limited to studies on microscope slides or in culture dishes.  Visualizing biological processes in more authentic environments—heterogeneous tissues and whole animals—requires tools that can function over longer time and length scales.  Toward this end, my group is developing general probes for imaging cellular and molecular features in vivo.  Our work leverages bioluminescence, nature’s light-emitting chemistry with luciferase enzymes and luciferin small molecules.  Bioluminescence can circumvent historical challenges with imaging in tissues and organisms, and permit sensitive tracking over time.  This talk will showcase our efforts to develop engineered luciferases and luciferins for noninvasive visualization, along with novel detection platforms. Applications of the technologies in biological imaging will also be highlighted.  Collectively, these pursuits are enhancing our understanding of living systems and enabling new discoveries.