Congratulations to Anu, Zhiyang, Suchita and colleagues on their new paper in Nature Chemical Biology describing the first acoustic biosensors. These biosensors turn on nonlinear ultrasound contrast in response to protease activity. This allows the action of enzymes such as TEV, Calpain and ClpXP to be visualized in cells deep inside the body.

Lakshmanan A#, Jin Z#, Nety SP, Sawyer DP, Lee-Gosselin A, Malounda D, Swift MB, Maresca D, Shapiro MG*. Acoustic biosensors for ultrasound imaging of enzyme activity. Nature Chemical Biology 16, 988-986 (2020).
article | readcube | behind the paper | press

Congratulations to Mohamad, Justin and Dan on their new paper in ACS Synthetic Biology describing genetic circuits allowing engineered T-cell immunotherapies to be controlled with temperature. Their work creates the possibility of controlling T-cells inside the body with brief pulses of heat delivered by focused ultrasound, magnetic hyperthermia or infrared light.

Abedi MH, Lee J, Piraner DI, Shapiro MG*. Thermal control of engineered T-cells. ACS Synthetic Biology 9, 1941-50 (2020). article | bioRxiv preprint

Thanks to everyone who joined us to celebrate the holiday season, toast to an exciting and fulfilling 2020 and squeeze into a selfe!

Congratulations to Arash, Gabrielle, Danny and Ray on their new paper in Science describing 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. Science 365, 1469 (2019). article | perspective | news

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 8, 2256-2262 (2019). article

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. NeuroImage (2019). article

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