“Autonomous bioluminescence imaging in eukaryotes”
Discovery of the bioluminescence pathway in the fungus Neonothopanus nambi allowed engineering of eukaryotes with self-sustained luminescence, and opened new opportunities for development of biosensors and non-invasive physiology imaging. However, the brightness of bioluminescence in heterologous hosts was limited by performance and stability of the wild type fungal enzymes. In this talk, I would like to describe our recent work on optimisation of the fungal bioluminescence pathway. Through directed evolution of bioluminescence enzymes, coupled with the screening of orthologues from other fungal species, we created a version of the bioluminescence system outperforming the original system by 1-2 orders of magnitude in plant, fungal and mammalian hosts.
If anyone is interested in meeting with Dr. Sarkisyan, please contact Diego Orzaez (dorzaez@ibmcp.upv.es)
