报告题目：Illuminating RNA worlds
报告人：Andrej Lupták 教授
主持人：任艾明 资深研究员
时 间：2025年11月20日（周四）上午10点
地 点：纳米楼457报告厅
报告人简介：
Andrej Lupták earned his Bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and biophysics and Master’s in chemistry in 1996 working with Ponzy Lu at the University of Pennsylvania. He then got his Ph.D in biophysical chemistry working with Jennifer Doudna at Yale University in 2002 and from 2002 to 2007 was a postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Jack Szostak’s research group. Since 2007 he’s been on faculty at the University of California, Irvine, where he is currently a professor of pharmaceutical sciences, chemistry, and molecular biology and biochemistry; and serves as the Founding Director of the Robert A. Mah Molecular Innovation Center. His research focuses on exploring the biology and chemistry of RNA. By utilizing in vitro selection techniques and structure-based bioinformatics, he aims to search for new catalytic RNAs and aptamers across genomes to gain insight on novel modes of cell regulation. He and his lab are also developing novel optogenetic tools to regulate and trace RNAs in live cells; and study the role of phosphate chemistry and RNA in the origin of life on Earth.
讲座摘要：
Understanding RNA biology requires methodologies capable of tracking the synthesis, localization, and regulation of transcripts within living systems. Conventional approaches predominantly rely on fluorescent probes, which are fundamentally limited by requirements for external excitation light-leading to complications including autofluorescence, phototoxicity, and restricted tissue penetration.
To address these challenges, Professor Luptak’s team has developed a bioluminescent platform for serial RNA imaging. The system employs RNA lanterns, which are fusions of MS2 and PP7 bacteriophage coat proteins with split fragments of NanoLuc luciferase. These lanterns assemble upon transcription of a target RNA appended with a short, engineered bait sequence, leading to photon production. The team extensively optimized both the lanterns and RNA bait to maximize signal turn-on and minimize the size of the protein-RNA complex. Through systematic optimization, they have developed a rigid RNA bait architecture that enables highly sensitive detection with just a single copy, which is a dramatic improvement over existing fluorescent platforms that require multiple repeating units. This versatile platform supports robust RNA imaging in mammalian cells and in live mice, establishing a foundational methodology for visualizing RNA dynamics across scales. This work significantly expands the chemical and methodological frontiers for investigating RNA in physiologically authentic environments.
