Jennifer Prescher Seminar
Imaging tools enable researchers to spy on cells and biomolecules and track their behaviors in real time. While powerful, many of these probes are limited to studies on microscope slides or in culture dishes. Visualizing biological processes in more authentic environments—heterogeneous tissues and whole animals—requires tools that can function over longer time and length scales. Toward this end, my group is developing general probes for imaging cellular and molecular features in vivo. Our work leverages bioluminescence, nature’s light-emitting chemistry with luciferase enzymes and luciferin small molecules. Bioluminescence can circumvent historical challenges with imaging in tissues and organisms, and permit sensitive tracking over time. This talk will showcase our efforts to develop engineered luciferases and luciferins for noninvasive visualization, along with novel detection platforms. Applications of the technologies in biological imaging will also be highlighted. Collectively, these pursuits are enhancing our understanding of living systems and enabling new discoveries.
Jennifer (Jenn) Prescher received her B.S. degree in chemistry at the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse in 2001. She earned her Ph.D. in 2006 from the University of California, Berkeley. At Cal, she worked with Professor Carolyn Bertozzi on the development and in vivo application of bioorthogonal chemistries. Prescher later joined the laboratory of Professor Christopher Contag at Stanford University, where she developed new bioluminescent imaging probes. She joined the faculty at the University of California, Irvine in 2010 and is currently a Professor of Chemistry, Molecular Biology & Biochemistry, and Pharmaceutical Sciences. She has received several honors for her work, including an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, a Paul Allen Distinguished Investigator Award, and most recently, an ACS Cope Scholar Award. She is also an Associate Editor at ACS Chemical Biology (so please send her your best work!)
Prescher’s current research focuses on developing new chemical tools and noninvasive imaging strategies to visualize and control cellular communication. Cellular networks drive diverse aspects of human biology, but the mechanisms by which cells transact information are not completely understood. The number of cell types involved, the timing and location of their interactions, the molecular cues exchanged, and the long-term fates of the cells remain poorly characterized in most cases. This is due, in part, to a lack of tools for observing collections of cells in their native habitats. Prescher and her team are developing novel probes and platforms to “spy” on cells and decipher their communications. This information can ultimately be used to manipulate cells and molecules in vivo.
