Next-generation targeting has organelle-level precision

DIPC Seminars

Speaker

Yamuna Krishnan
Department of Chemistry & Grossman Institute of Neuroscience, Quantitative Biology and Human Behavior, The University of Chicago

When

2025/10/17
11:30

Place

DIPC Josebe Olarra Auditorium

Host

DIPC, The Gipuzkoa Provincial Council.

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The Women and Science program, launched in 2021 by the Gipuzkoa Provincial Council and DIPC, aims to promote the visibility and presence of women of excellence in science. This initiative aligns with DIPC’s mission and the Council’s commitment to advancing gender equality in all areas, particularly in those where inequality is most pronounced.
As part of this initiative, DIPC and the Gipuzkoa Provincial Council have organised a seminar featuring Professor Yamuna Krishnan, who will deliver a talk entitled “Next-generation targeting has organelle-level precision”. Her talk will be followed by dialogue/interview moderated by Professor Luca Salassa, Ikerbasque Research Professor at DIPC.

Abstract of the talk:

Intracellular organelles are relatively autonomous sub-systems within the cell, whose activity and chemical composition reflect the cell’s metabolic state. Metabolism is altered in diseased or aging cells this is reflected at the level of specific organelles within them. Often, introducing compensatory changes in organelles can restore cells to normalcy given the intrinsic feedback between cells and their organelles.
Nature already targets the delivery of exogenous cargo with organelle-level precision in living organisms as evidenced by invading pathogens as well as endogenous signaling molecules. DNA can be self-assembled into molecularly precise, well-defined, synthetic assemblies on the nanoscale, commonly referred to as designer DNA nanodevices. Over the last decade, my lab developed a way to target DNA nanodevices to specific cells in vivo, but with organelle-level precision.
Our first discovery in 2011 revealed that DNA nanodevices could reach organelles called lysosomes specific cells of live nematodes, where it functioned as a reporter of pH. (1-2) Until this innovation, it was not at all obvious whether such DNA nanodevices could function inside a living cell without being interfered with, or interfering with, the cells own networks of DNA control. We spent 10 years studying the environment within lysosomes.
I will discuss how we use the lysosome as a portal to control cell state, flip the cell “from baddie to goodie” and turn cold tumors hot in mice.