Congratulations to Dan and Echo on their publication describing modular protein domains with sharp, tunable, temperature-dependent heterodimerization. Fusing these domains with other proteins provides control over their association and localization using temperature, which can be delivered globally and locally using methods such as focused ultrasound and magnetic hyperthermia.

Piraner DI, Wu Y, Shapiro MG*. Modular thermal control of protein dimerization. ACS Synthetic Biology (2019). article | bioRxiv preprint

Thanks to all the lab members, alumni and friends who joined us for the Shapiro Lab summer retreat in Temecula, CA.

Congratulations to David, Audrey, Bill, Dina and collaborators in Paris on demonstrating enhanced non-invasive imaging of neural activity in mice using intravascular gas vesicles as boosters of hemodynamic functional ultrasound contrast.

Maresca D, Payen T, Lee-Gosselin A, Ling B, Malounda D, Demene C, Tanter M, Shapiro MG*. Acoustic biomolecules enhance hemodynamic functional ultrasound imaging of neural activity.
bioRxiv preprint

Congratulations to Di, Diego, Dina, David and collaborators on their discovery that genetically engineered cells encoding gas vesicles can be trapped, patterned and made to dance (video) with ultrasound standing waves.

Wu D, Baresch D, Cook C, Malounda D, Maresca D, Abundo MP, Mittelstein DR, Shapiro MG*. Genetically encoded nanostructures enable acoustic manipulation of engineered cells. bioRxiv preprint

Congratulations to Dr. Pradeep Ramesh, Dr. Dan Piraner and Dr. Anupama Lakshmanan on getting their PhDs in Bioengineering, Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, and Bioengineering, respectively, at Caltech’s 2019 Commencement! And a special congratulations to Dr. Lakshmanan on her Clauser Doctoral Prize for the best PhD thesis at Caltech!

Congratulations to Avinoam, Atousa and colleagues on their study showing that gas vesicles can be turned into cavitating free bubbles using low frequency ultrasound, enabling their use as molecularly targeted and genetically encoded “explosives”.

Bar-Zion A, Nourmahnad A, Mittelstein DR, Yoo S, Malounda D, Abedi MH, Lee-Gosselin A, Maresca D, Shapiro MG*. Acoustically detonated biomolecules for genetically encodable inertial cavitation.
bioRxiv preprint

Congratulations to George, Dina and our collaborators at OCT Medical and UCSD on developing the first biomolecular, genetically encodable contrast agents for for optical coherence tomography based on the optical properties of gas vesicles.

Lu GJ, Chou L, Malounda D, Patel AK, Welsbie DS, Chou DL*, Ramalingam T*, Shapiro MG*. Biomolecular contrast agents for optical coherence tomography Submitted. bioRxiv preprint

Congratulations to Arash, Gabrielle, Danny and Ray on their study demonstrating the mammalian expression of gas vesicles. For the first time, ultrasound can be used to image gene expression in mammalian cells.

Farhadi A, Ho GH, Sawyer DP, Bourdeau RW, Shapiro MG*. Ultrasound imaging of gene expression in mammalian cells. Submitted. bioRxiv preprint

Thanks to all who joined to celebrate an amazing 2018 and welcome the new year! More photos.

Congratulations to David, Danny, Audrey and collaborators on their new ultrasound imaging scheme, which uses cross-propagating sound waves to obtain maximal specificity for imaging non-linear contrast agents such as gas vesicles.

Maresca D#*, Sawyer DP#, Renaud G, Lee-Gosselin A, Shapiro MG*. Nonlinear X-wave ultrasound imaging of acoustic biomolecules. Physical Review X 8, 041002 (2018).
article | synopsis