Abstract
This talk is focused on how to treat DNA as a true polymer in order to develop DNA-based, bulk scale materials. More specifically, our group has been engineering DNA as both a genetic (bio-) and a generic (nano-) material. Following synthetic polymer’s topologies, we first created branched DNA as additional building blocks, from which we then fabricated an all-DNA hydrogel by crosslinking branched DNA via an enzyme. By further covalently-doping the all-DNA hydrogel with a gene, our DNA hydrogel was transformed into a gel that produced large amounts of functional proteins without any living cells (termed P-gel). P-gel successfully converted the central dogma from inside a cell to a gel-based chemical reaction in a test tube. P-gel is envisioned not only as a platform technology for cell-free protein expression in particular, but also as a totally synthetic route for protein engineering in general. Recently, we employed another enzyme to elongate DNA chains to such an extent that they entangled together, forming yet another type of hydrogel. This novel, physical DNA-hydrogel was termed “meta-hydrogel” since it had both liquid and solid properties that cannot be found in nature. These all-DNA hydrogels have great potentials in biomedical applications including as vehicles for drug delivery, scaffolds for 3D cell-culture, platforms for protein expression and protein engineering, and drugs for immune-regulations. In addition to DNA hydrogels, other DNA-based materials including DNA-nanoparticle hybrids and DNA-nanobarcodes have been created; they can be employed in a variety of real-world applications.
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Biosketch
Dr. Dan Luo is currently Professor in the Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University. He is also a faculty member for the field of Biomedical Engineering. Dr. Luo obtained his B.S. in Biological Sciences from the University of Science and Technology of China and his Ph.D. in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology from The Ohio State University in 1997. He carried out his postdoctoral training in Chemical Engineering at Cornell under Prof. Mark Saltzman. Dr. Luo joined Cornell faculty as an Assistant Professor in 2001, obtained tenure in 2007, and was promoted to full professorship in 2011. He is a recipient of the National Science Foundation’s CAREER Award, the Cornell Provost’s Award for Distinguished Scholarship, the SUNY (New York State) Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities, the Journal of Materials Chemistry Editorial Board Award, New York State Faculty Development Award (“Distinguished Professor”), College Award for Outstanding Accomplishments in Basic Research, and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Point-of-Care Diagnostics Grand Challenge Award. Dr. Luo serves as an associate editor or an editorial board member for eight international journals, and has given close to 200 invited talks worldwide. He was also selected three times by undergraduate students as a Cornell outstanding educator. Recently Dr. Luo was elected as a College Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).
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