Event

Bioengineering Seminar Series: Andreas Vasdekis

Friday, April 24, 2015
9:00 a.m.
Pepco Room (1105), Jeong H. Kim Engineering Building
Associate Professor Ian White
ianwhite@umd.edu

Andreas Vasdekis
Assistant Professor
Department of Physics
University of Idaho

Seeing Bioprocessing with New Eyes: Vesicle Photonics in Single Cell Analysis

Single cell analyses have recently unmasked the random character of gene expression. This surprising finding has revolutionized how we view not only gene expression, but also intracellular reactions in general. Advances in cell transformations and biophotonics played a critical role in such discoveries. Further progress would, however, extend intracellular randomness to practical bioprocessing applications.

Vesicles - fluid encapsulating membranes of nm- to µm- scale - have important implications in cell function, such as in internalization, storage and signaling [1]. For this, as well as their ability to be artificially synthesized in the laboratory [2], vesicles offer exceptional opportunities in biophotonics. To this end, we introduced Vesicle Photonics [3], coining thus the interactions between light and vesicles. Such interactions can be critical in single cell applications [4], both in bioimaging as well as cell-function modulation.  

In this talk, Vesicle Photonics will be introduced, followed by our recent related results. Exploding vesicles and vesicles as imaging contrast agents, will be discussed in the context of ultra-fast immuno-modulation [5] and lipogenesis [6] of single-cells respectively. These studies indicated that intracellular randomness not only extends past gene expression but is also extensively involved in multi-cascade reactions during drug response and product biosynthesis. The first project was performed within the groups of Demetri Psaltis (EPFL) and Jeff Hubbell (now at U. Chicago), while the second is an ongoing collaboration with Greg Stephanopoulos (MIT).

References

[1] A. Jesorka, O. Orwar, ‘Liposomes: technologies and analytical applications’, Annual Review of Analytical Chemistry 1, 801 (2008).

[2] D. E. Discher, A. Eisenberg, ‘Polymer vesicles’, Science 297, 967 (2002).

[3] A. E. Vasdekis, E. A. Scott, S. Roke, J. A. Hubbell, D. Psaltis, ‘Vesicle Photonics’, Annual Review of Materials Research 43, 283 (2013).

[4] A. E. Vasdekis, G. Stephanopoulos, ‘Review of Methods to Probe Single Cell Metabolism and Bioenergetics’, Metabolic Engineering 27, 115-135 (2015).

[5] A. E. Vasdekis, E. A. Scott, D. Psaltis, J. A. Hubbell, ‘Precision Intracellular Delivery Based on Optofluidic Polymersome Rupture’, ACS Nano 6, 7850 (2012).

[6] A. E. Vasdekis, A. M. Silverman, G. Stephanopoulos, submitted (2015).

About the Speaker

Andreas received his PhD in soft-matter photophysics and applications at the University of St. Andrews (UK). Following a short spell at Caltech (US), he spent three years as a postdoctoral scholar at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (Switzerland). Prior to joining the University of Idaho in late 2014, he was at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (Department of Energy, US) for two years investigating metabolism at the single cell level. Presently, his group’s activities focus on single cell biophysics, including the development of enabling optofluidic, microfluidic and imaging technologies.