Gas-filled Protein Nanostructures
Protein Engineering | Cell Therapies | Living Materials | UltrasoundGas vesicles are a group of genetically encoded protein nanostructures that can assemble inside cells and create nanoscale stable air compartments. We leverage their unique acoustic, optical, and magnetic properties and develop creative solutions to address challenges from biomedicine to material science.
We are recruiting!
Ph.D. Students:
We are looking for talented and passionate graduate students who are interested in a variety of projects on protein engineering, synthetic biology, cell therapies, ultrasound imaging, biomanufacturing, and living materials. Prospective students are encouraged to reach out to Dr. Lu (george.lu at rice.edu) with their CV and a statement of interest to discuss the opportunities in the lab. Rice offers several outstanding Ph.D. programs relevant to our research: (1) Bioengineering program that are ranked among the top 10 in the coutry, (2) Systems, Synthetic, and Physical Biology (SSPB), an elite graduate program aiming focusing on engineering biological systems, and (3) Applied Physics program, which offers a unique multidisciplinary research experience.
Master Students:
Prospective master students are encouraged to apply to Rice’s Master of Bioengineering program. Please note that we recently added a Research-Based track in addition to the previous Class-Based track under the Applied Bioengineering concentration. While both tracks provide opportunities for one to conduct research projects in an individual lab, the research track provides more resources and time. See here for details.
Undergraduate Students:
We are looking for motivated undergraduate students who are interested in doing research. Please feel free to email your inquiries to Dr. Lu (george.lu at rice.edu).
Postdoctoral Fellows:
We are actively seeking talented and motivated postdoctoral fellows to join our multidisciplinary group. Candidates with experience and interest in the following fields are particularly encouraged to apply: ultrasound imaging physics, living materials, synthetic biology, and microbial engineering. Please see any one of the following job advertisements: Ultrasound Imaging Physicist, general, and the search for the most updated Rice University post.
Research Assistants:
We are looking for motivated research assistants who are interested in conducting resarch projects. Please feel free to email your inquiries to Dr. Lu (george.lu at rice.edu).
What We Do
Image and control cell therapies
Ultrasound can noninvasively reach the targets at centimeter-deep tissue. We develop protein sensors and genetic circuits that render cells visible and controllable by ultrasound.
Protein assembly engineering
A group of 8-12 proteins works cooperatively to form the gas-filled protein nanostructures. We aim to understand and design the structure, function, and assembly of these unique protein nanostructures.
Living materials
Engineered living materials (ELMs) are living cells that autonomously form the material and can often modulate the functional performance and sense the surrounding environments. We leverage the optical, mechanical, and acoustic properties of gas vesicles to create ELMs with unique material properties.
Engineer biology in the mesoscopic domain
The mesoscopic domain is defined to be between the size of a single protein and that of a cell. Our long-term vision is to engineer biology in this domain to provide innovative solutions to world.
Who We Are
George J. Lu
PI, SynMA Group
Assistant Professor of Bioengineering
george.lu@rice.edu
Manuel Iburg
DFG Postdoctoral Fellow
Ph.D. Humboldt University
M.Sc. & B.Sc., Leibniz U of Hanover
manuel.iburg@rice.edu
Andy Liu
Undergraduate researcher,
B.Sc., Rice University, expected 2027
al168@rice.edu
Kathy Xiao Cai
Ph.D. Student, Bioengineering
B.Sc., Texas A&M University
kx11@rice.edu
Diana Barr
Ph.D. Student, Bioengineering
B.Sc., U Mass Amherst
db107@rice.edu
Sumin Jeong
Undergraduate researcher,
B.Sc., Rice University,
expected 2025
sj71@rice.edu
Rishab Mandyam
Undergraduate researcher,
B.Sc., Rice University, expected 2027
rishab.mandyam@rice.edu
Jaiden Vera
High-school researcher,
DeBakey High School, expected 2025
Eugene Chung
Ph.D. Student, Bioengineering
B.Sc. Arizona State U
epc2@rice.edu
Chungwon Kang
Ph.D. Student, Bioengineering
M.Sc. & B.Sc., Dongguk University, Korea
chungwon.kang@rice.edu
Mohamed Mohamed
Ph.D. Student, Bioengineering
M.Sc., Carnegie Mellon U
B.Sc., Syracuse U
mm272@rice.edu
Eman Fayyaz
Undergraduate researcher,
B.Sc., Rice University, expected 2027
eman.fayyaz@rice.edu
Paul Kim
Ph.D. Student, Bioengineering
B.Sc., Rice University
pk27@rice.edu
Sanjay Senthilvelan
Undergraduate researcher,
B.Sc., Rice University, expected 2027
ss352@rice.edu
Chia-Yu Ho (Johnny)
PhD student, Bioengineering
M.Sc. & B.Sc., National Tsing Hua University
chia-yu.ho@rice.edu
Zongru Li
Ph.D. Student, Bioengineering
M.Sc., Northwestern U
B.Sc., U of Rochester
zongru.li@rice.edu
Xingzheng Sun (Jason)
Ph.D. Student, Bioengineering
B.Sc., UC Los Angeles
xingz@rice.edu
Photos and Fun
BioE retreat 2024
Lab dinner 2024
Summer group photo 2021
Beach party 2021
Lab dinner 2021
Birthday parties
News
Our manuscript Phase transition of GvpU regulates gas vesicle clustering in bacteria is now published on Nature Microbiology. Congratulations to Zongru Li for leading this project. Please also see the Rice news.
Our preprint manuscript Elucidating the assembly of gas vesicles by systematic protein-protein interaction analysis is now on bioRxiv. Big cheers to Manuel Iburg and all other co-authors from the lab. Please also see the Twitter and LinkedIn posts.
Our preprint manuscript Spatial Organization of Gas Vesicles is Governed by Phase-separable GvpU is now on bioRxiv. Congratulations to Zongru Li for leading this project as well as other co-authors from the lab. Please also see the Twitter and LinkedIn posts.
Congratulations to Eugene Chung for receiving the prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP).
Congratulations to our undergraduate student, Vivian Wong, for receiving the Distinction in Research and Creative Works award at her graduation.
Congratulations to Manuel Iburg for receiving the prestigious German Research Foundation (DFG) postdoctoral fellowship.
We received support from the Heating Health Foundation for our collaboration with the Raphael Group to develop molecular imaging agents for monitoring Ménière’s disease. See news.
Congratulations to our undergrad student Ramiro Cantu for winning the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURF).
Our preprint manuscript 50-nm gas-filled protein nanostructures to enable the access of lymphatic cells by ultrasound technologies is now on bioRxiv. Congratulations to Nicole Shen and Zongru Li for leading this project as well as other co-authors from the lab. Please also see the Twitter and LinkedIn posts.
Congratulations to Jimmy Dickantone for winning the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) and the Award for Excellence in Poster Presentations at Rice Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium.
We received support from John S. Dunn Foundation for developing treatments for pancreatic cancer. See the Rice news.
The preprint manuscript Structure of Anabaena flos-aquae gas vesicles revealed by cryo-ET presents the high-resolution structure of gas vesicles and is now on bioRxiv.
Congratulations to our gradudate student Zongru Li for winning the 2022 IBB Student Travel Award.
Congratulations to our postdoc Manuel Iburg for being selected as a Junior Fellow in the Rice Academy of Fellows.
We received funding support from the Mathers Foundation to develop gas vesicles as the acoustic reporter genes. See news.
We received funding support from the Welch Foundation to study gas-filled protein nanostructures. See news.
Miscellaneous
Open Positions
Outreach
Publications
Donation
Teaching
Contact
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Publications
Phase transition of GvpU regulates gas vesicle clustering in bacteria
Nature Microbiology (2024)
Microbes pack gas vesicles into tight bundles to save their cytosolic space, yet the molecular mechanism behind this process has remained elusive. Our research has identified the key protein responsible for this bundling and revealed its intriguing phase separation behavior. For more details, please see the manuscript and the news article.
Gas-filled MRI contrast agents
Nature Materials (2018)
Gas vesicles derived from photosynthetic microbes are shown to elicit magnetic resonance imaging contrast in vitro and in vivo with the potential for acoustically modulated multiplexing and molecular sensing. This article is featured as the cover story of the journal Nature Materials.
Charting the assembly of GVs
The EMBO Journal (2024)
Gas vesicles (GVs) are microbial gas-filled protein organelles that have been repurposed recently for a diverse set of biomedical applications such as ultrasound imaging of gene expression and ultrasound-mediated delivery. GVs do not self-assemble inside bacteria and instead require a coordinated effort of ~10 proteins to assemble. As a first step to unravel this intriguing cellular process, we constructed a systematic protein-protein interaction map, which led to hypotheses of protein clusters for each stage of the assembly. We anticipate the work will lay the foundation to solve the molecular mechanism of GV assembly. This work is featured as the cover story in EMBO J. For more details, please see the manuscript and the news article.
Virus-size ultrasmall bubbles
Advanced Materials (2024)
We have successfully reduced gas vesicles (GVs) to the size of a virus, and to our knowledge, these represent some of the smallest stable, free-floating bubbles ever created. Our research demonstrates that these 50-nm GVs can effectively target lymph-node resident immune cells, paving the way for innovative applications in ultrasound-mediated delivery and imaging. This work is featured as one of the cover stories in Advanced Materials. For more details, please see the manuscript and the news article.
Journal Articles
- Iburg M#, Anderson AP#, Wong VT, Anton ED, He A, Lu GJ (2024) Elucidating the assembly of gas vesicles by systematic protein-protein interaction analysis. The EMBO Journal. News article | bioRxiv | Preprint tweet | LinkedIn. (#co-authors)
- Shen Q#, Li Z#, Wang Y, Meyer MD, De Guzman MT, Lim JC, Xiao H, Bouchard RR, and Lu GJ (2024). 50-nm gas-filled protein nanostructures to enable the access of lymphatic cells by ultrasound technologies. Advanced Materials 36, e2307123. News article | Featured on the journal cover | bioRxiv | Preprint tweet | LinkedIn. (#co-authors)
- Li Z, Shen Q, Usher ET, Anderson AP, Iburg M, Lin R, Zimmer B, Meyer MD, Holehouse AS, You L, Chilkoti A, Dai Y, Lu GJ (2024). Phase transition of GvpU regulates gas vesicle clustering in bacteria. Nature Microbiology 9, 1021-1035. News article | Tweet | bioRxiv | Preprint tweet | LinkedIn.
- Dutka P, Metskas LA, Hurt RC, Salahshoor H, Wang TY, Malounda D, Lu GJ, Chou TF, Shapiro MG, Jensen GJ (2023). Structure of Anabaena flos-aquae gas vesicles revealed by cryo-ET. Structure 31, 518-528 e516.
- Dutka P, Malounda D, Metskas LA, Chen S, Hurt RC, Lu GJ, Jensen GJ, Shapiro MG (2021) Measuring gas vesicle dimensions by electron microscopy. Protein Science 30, 1081-1086.
- Lu GJ, Chou L, Malounda D, Patel AK, Welsbie DS, Chou DL, Ramalingam T, Shapiro MG (2020) Biomolecular contrast agents for optical coherence tomography. ACS Nano 14, 7823–7831.
- Kunth M, Lu GJ, Witte C, Shapiro MG, Schröder L (2018) Protein nanostructures produce self-adjusting hyperpolarized magnetic resonance imaging contrast through physical gas partitioning. ACS Nano 12, 10939-10948.
- Lu GJ#, Farhadi A#, Mukherjee A, Shapiro MG (2018) Proteins, air and water: reporter genes for ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging. Current Opinion in Chemical Biology 45, 57-63. (# co-authors)
- Maresca D, Lakshmanan A, Abedi M, Bar-Zion A, Farhadi A, Lu GJ, Szablowski JO, Wu D, Yoo S, Shapiro MG (2018) Biomolecular Ultrasound and Sonogenetics. Annu. Rev. Chem. Biomol. Eng. 9, 229-252.
- Lu GJ, Farhadi A, Szablowski JO, Lee-Gosselin A, Barnes SR, Lakshmanan A, Bourdeau RW, Shapiro MG (2018) Acoustically modulated magnetic resonance imaging of gas-filled protein nanostructures. Nature Materials 17, 456-463. News & Views | Featured on the journal cover | Media news | Behind the paper
- Farhadi A, Ho G, Kunth M, Ling B, Lakshmanan A, Lu GJ, Bourdeau RW, Schröder L, Shapiro MG (2018) Recombinantly Expressed Gas Vesicles as Nanoscale Contrast Agents for Ultrasound and Hyperpolarized MRI. AIChE Journal 64:2927–2933.
- Lakshmanan A#, Lu GJ#, Farhadi A#, Nety SP#, Kunth M, Lee-Gosselin A, Maresca D, Bourdeau RW, Yin M, Yan J, Witte C, Malounda D, Foster FS, Schröder L, Shapiro MG (2017) Preparation of biogenic gas vesicle nanostructures for use as contrast agents for ultrasound and MRI. Nature Protocols 12(10):2050-2080. (# co-authors)
- Mukherjee A, Davis HC, Ramesh P, Lu GJ, Shapiro MG (2017) Biomolecular MRI reporters: Evolution of new mechanisms. Prog. Nucl. Magn. Reson. Spectrosc. 102-103:32-42.
- Maley AM, Lu GJ, Shapiro MG, Corn RM (2017) Characterizing Single Polymeric and Protein Nanoparticles with Surface Plasmon Resonance Imaging Measurements. ACS Nano 11(7):7447-7456.
- Barskiy DA, Coffey AM, Nikolaou P, Mikhaylov DM, Goodson BM, Branca RT, Lu GJ, Shapiro MG, Telkki V-V, Zhivonitko VV, Koptyug IV, Salnikov OG, Kovtunov KV, Bukhtiyarov VI, Rosen MS, Barlow MJ, Safavi S, Hall IP, Schröder L, Chekmenev EY (2017) NMR Hyperpolarization Techniques of Gases. Chemistry 23(4):725-751.
- Radoicic J, Lu GJ, Opella SJ (2014) NMR structures of membrane proteins in phospholipid bilayers. Q. Rev. Biophys. 47(3):249-283.
- Tian Y, Lu GJ, Marassi FM, Opella SJ (2014) Structure of the membrane protein MerF, a bacterial mercury transporter, improved by the inclusion of chemical shift anisotropy constraints. J. Biomol. NMR 60(1):67-71.
- Lu GJ, Opella SJ (2014) Resonance assignments of a membrane protein in phospholipid bilayers by combining multiple strategies of oriented sample solid-state NMR. J. Biomol. NMR 58(1):69-81.
- Lu GJ, Opella SJ (2014) Mechanism of dilute-spin-exchange in solid-state NMR. J. Chem. Phys. 140(12):124201.
- Lu GJ, Opella SJ (2013) Motion-adapted pulse sequences for oriented sample (OS) solid-state NMR of biopolymers. J. Chem. Phys. 139(8):084203.
- Lu GJ, Tian Y, Vora N, Marassi FM, Opella SJ (2013) The structure of the mercury transporter MerF in phospholipid bilayers: a large conformational rearrangement results from N-terminal truncation. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 135(25):9299-9302.
- Das BB, Nothnagel HJ, Lu GJ, Son WS, Tian Y, Marassi FM, Opella SJ (2012) Structure determination of a membrane protein in proteoliposomes. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 134(4):2047-2056.
- Lu GJ, Park SH, Opella SJ (2012) Improved 1H amide resonance line narrowing in oriented sample solid-state NMR of membrane proteins in phospholipid bilayers. J. Magn. Reson. 220:54-61.
- Son WS, Park SH, Nothnagel HJ, Lu GJ, Wang Y, Zhang H, Cook GA, Howell SC, Opella SJ (2012) ‘q-Titration’ of long-chain and short-chain lipids differentiates between structured and mobile residues of membrane proteins studied in bicelles by solution NMR spectroscopy. J. Magn. Reson. 214(0):111-118.
- Lu GJ, Son WS, Opella SJ (2011) A general assignment method for oriented sample (OS) solid-state NMR of proteins based on the correlation of resonances through heteronuclear dipolar couplings in samples aligned parallel and perpendicular to the magnetic field. J. Magn. Reson. 209(2):195-206.
- Marassi FM, Das BB, Lu GJ, Nothnagel HJ, Park SH, Son WS, Tian Y, Opella SJ (2011) Structure determination of membrane proteins in five easy pieces. Methods 55(4):363-369.
- Knox RW, Lu GJ, Opella SJ, Nevzorov AA (2010) A Resonance Assignment Method for Oriented-Sample Solid-State NMR of Proteins. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 132(24):8255-8257.
- Cherney LT, Cherney MM, Garen CR, Lu GJ, James MNG (2008) Crystal Structure of the Arginine Repressor Protein in Complex with the DNA Operator from Mycobacterium tuberculosis. J. Mol. Biol. 384(5):1330-1340.
- Cherney LT, Cherney MM, Garen CR, Lu GJ, James MNG (2008) Structure of the C-terminal domain of the arginine repressor protein from Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Acta Crystallogr D Biol Crystallogr 64(Pt 9):950-956.
- Lu GJ, Garen CR, Cherney MM, Cherney LT, Lee C, James MNG (2007) Expression, purification and preliminary X-ray analysis of the C-terminal domain of an arginine repressor protein from Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Acta Crystallogr Sect F Struct Biol Cryst Commun 63(Pt 11):936-939.
Patent
- Lu GJ, Shapiro MG, Farhadi A, Szablowski JO. Gas-filled structures and related compositions, methods and systems for magnetic resonance imaging. Filed July 28, 2017, Application Number: US 15/663,600.
Teaching
BIOE 532/432: Biomanufacturing, Sustainability, and Bioeconomy
Synopsis: The climate crisis, the need for sustainable energy sources, the manufacturing of commodities with low carbon emissions, and the scalable manufacturing of biomedicines are some of the grand challenges of the 21st century. Biotechnology and synthetic biology can offer innovative solutions to many of these challenges. This course will survey the current frontier of research on these topics, explore the future of the bioeconomy, and brainstorm novel strategies to address these challenges.
BIOE 505: Macromolecular Assemblies
Synopsis: There is increasing attention on the biological phenomena and engineering opportunities at the mesoscopic scale, which is between the size of a single protein and that of the large organelles. This course will cover a range of these phenomena, such as viral particles, ribosomes, bacterial microcompartments, amyloid fibrils, gas vesicles, and membraneless condensates. Additionally, the course will aim to formulate physical principles behind these phenomena, describe the experimental and computational approaches to study them, and discuss how to engineer these assemblies.
Donation
Your donation will help advance our research and education towards cell-based therapies for cancer and new biodegradable materials.
Online donations:
Visit the School of Engineering Donation Page
Enter gift amount
From the Designation pull-down menu choose “Other”.
In the Special Instructions box type “Lu Lab Donation”
Mail in donations:
Send your check to the address below and earmark it specifically for the Lu Lab
Rice University
Office of Development MS-81
P.O. Box 1892
Houston, TX 77251-1892
If you need further information, please email giving@rice.edu or call 713-348-4991. Please also feel free to directly contact Dr. George Lu (george.lu@rice.edu).
Contact
Lab location: BioScience Research Collaborative (BRC)
Address: 6500 Main St., BRC 670, Houston, TX 77030
Email: x@rice.edu and replace x with george.lu
Links: Campus Map; BRC building
Our Funding
