Molecular Optogenetics Programming Cells and Biomaterials with Light
31 Marzo 2026
Molecular optogenetic technologies allow the control of cellular signaling processes along the whole signal
transduction cascade with unmatched spatial and temporal resolution.
Based on an overview of molecular photoreceptors, we will present three aspects of our work: First, we will
present extracellular optogenetic strategies to dynamically modulate biological and mechanical properties
of the extracellular matrix. Here, we demonstrate that the functional coupling of photoreceptors to chemical
polymers, biomolecules and surfaces allows the control of key features of matrix-cell interactions.
We further develop the concept of engineering intracellular liquid materials comprising synthetic or natural
transcription factors to adjust transgene activity. We describe different approaches for the stimulus-inducible
formation of liquid transcription factor condensates and demonstrate that these colocalize with target
promoters and yield a several-fold increased transgene activity compared to the non-engineered
transcription factor. We demonstrate that this concept can be applied to different transcription factors to
increase target gene activity in cell culture and in mice.
Finally, we will present recent work on shape-morphing materials where we program mammalian and
bacterial cells to induce autonomous, reversible shape morphing in engineered living materials.
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