Presenter
Fan Hong
Fan Hong is interested in developing biomolecular tools to dive into the complexity of biology (decoding and regulating cellular functions on the molecular basis at the tissue scale). Before joining the faculty at the University of Florida, Fan was a Postdoc Fellow at Wyss Institute at Harvard University where he worked on the DNA advanced in situ spatial multi-omics (e.g., DNA thermal-plex) in the Yin Lab. Thermal-plex enables multiplexed fluorescent imaging of biomolecules with unprecedented feasibility and speed for tissue biospecimen analysis. Fan completed his Ph.D. at Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University and worked in the Yan Lab, Green Lab, and Sulc Lab, where he developed methods to program nucleic acids in vitro (e.g., Framework DNA nanoarchitecture), in vivo (e.g., SNIPR), and in silico (e.g., crowder-oxDNA) to address grand questions with chemical approaches to biology. Those methods enable the control of nucleic acid folding into complex framework biomolecular architectures from the nanoscale to the macroscale, the regulation of cellular gene expression based on the single nucleotide mutation in cells with de-novo-designed RNA riboregulators, and the investigating of the biophysical behavior of nucleic acid folding in the crowding cellular environment with molecular dynamics. Fan is originally from Wuhan, China, where he earned his undergraduate degree at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology and stepped into the world of nucleic acids.
Summary:
The easy programmability and abundant biological functions make nucleic acid an ideal molecular engineering platform to advance biological research such as bioanalysis, gene regulation, and molecular architecture construction. In this talk, I’ll present an imaging platform named DNA thermal-plex that we recently developed. DNA thermal-plex overcame the fluorophore spectral overlap in traditional multiplexed imaging by using programmable step-wised melting of DNA probes in situ. Thermal-plex allows convenient bio-imaging with a compact on-scope heating device and ultrafast signal channel switching in seconds. Highly multiplexed imaging capability for RNAs and proteins (e.g.,15 targets) in cells and tissues (e.g., retina and brain) was achieved within minutes. I’ll also present a de-novo-designed RNA genetic switch named SNIPR. SNIPR can recognize single-nucleotide mutations and even single chemical modifications in an RNA transcript by transforming the mutation signal into protein expression with a high dynamic range (> 100-fold) in live cells. Combined with the freeze-dried cell-free system on paper, SNIPR enables rapid, low-cost, field-deployable mutation detections for cell-free DNA detection in cancer patients’ blood, human genome typing in tissues, and virus strain identifications.
Challenge:
What challenge would you like to see solved for progress in your field?De Novo Designed molecular machines can be embedded into cells to visualize and control cellular gene transcription, translation, and metabolisms.
