Title
Assistant Professor

Department
Dept of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering


Faculty URL
https://chemistry.berkeley.edu/faculty/cbe/landry

Research Group
http://landrylab.com/

Email
landry@berkeley.edu


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Research Expertise and Interest
nanomaterials, fluorescence microscopy, sensors, imaging, neuroscience, plant engineering

Research Description
The Landry Lab's work develops synthetic bio-mimetic nanocomposites to impart control over nanomaterial interactions with biological systems for two applications: 1) to exploit the intrinsic nanomaterial infrared fluorescence for?molecular imaging, and 2) to exploit the highly tunable chemical and physical properties of nanomaterials for?targeted delivery of biological cargoes.?
Molecular Imaging: The importance of monitoring neurotransmission is relevant to our understanding of neuropsychiatric disease, in which ‘neurochemical imbalances’ are at the core of many psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders such as depression, anxiety, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and social autism spectrum disorder. Her lab develops optical probes for neuromodulators such as dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine. Aberrant neuromodulator signaling in the brain has been implicated in various psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders, whereby many drugs target neuromodulator signaling. They implement their optical probes for neuromodulators such as dopamine (Beyene?et al. Science Advances?2019) and serotonin (Jeong?et al. Science Advances?2019)?to study addiction, Huntington's Disease, and Parkinson's Disease, among others.?
Targeted bio-delivery:?The Landry Lab?also develops nanoscale particles that?enable grafting and delivery of biomolecular cargoes (DNA, RNA, protein) to plants. Despite the importance of creating transgenic plants, plant systems remain difficult to genetically transform because of the unique presence of the plant cell wall, which poses the dominant barrier to exogenous biomolecule delivery. The?lab develops nanoparticle-based platforms to enable?delivery of gene vectors and RNA (Demirer et al.?Nature Nanotechnology?2019), and RNA (Zhang et al. PNAS?2019; Demirer et al. Science Advances?2020; Goh, Zhang et al. Nature Nanotechnology?2021) to agriculturally-relevant plants such as arugula, wheat, and cotton. Biomolecule delivery to plants can assist in?plant and crop genetic engineering can solidify the agricultural industry by conferring desirable traits to plants such as increased yield, abiotic stress tolerance, and disease and pest resistance. Production of transgenic plants with nanoparticle-based DNA delivery, without trasngene integration (Demirer et al. Nature Protocols?2019; Demirer, Zhang et al. Nature Protocols?2020), can address the need for sustainable and high-yielding crops without the need to cross out transgenes. Specifically, their platform for delivery of Cas9 DNA vectors represents a platform by which to genetically modify plants without DNA integration (when delivering a DNA vector coding for CRISPR), or without DNA altogether (when delivering an RNP), potentially enabling?gene-edited crops to circumvent the?process of?regulatory oversight as genetically modified organisms (GMOs) (Landry and Mitter, Nature Nanotechnology?2020; Demirer et al. Nature Nanotechnology?2021).
Awards and Honors
2022 Philomathia Prize
2022 McKnight NeuroscienceScholar Award
2022?Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub Young Investigator
2022 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science
2021 Nature Research Awards for Inspiring Women in Science?
2021 National Academies of Sciences Standing Committee on Biotechnology Capabilities and National Security
2021 Dreyfus Foundation Teacher-Scholar Award
2020 Cell Press 100 Most Inspiring Hispanic/Latinx Scientists in America
2020?NSF CAREER Award
2020?Frontiers of Imaging: CZI Deep Tissue Imaging Award
2020 SfN Janett Rosenberg Trubatch Career Development Award
2020?University of Illinois Alumni Association Young Alumni Award
2020 Emerging?Leader in Molecular Spectroscopy Award
2020?ECS Nanocarbons Division Young Investigator Award
2019 C&EN Talented 12
2019 Bakar Fellow
2019 Prytanean?Faculty Award
2018 Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers Young Investigator Award?
2018 DARPA Young Faculty Award
2018 Sloan Foundation Fellow
2017 Kavli Fellow, National Academies of Engineering FOE
2017 FFAR New Innovator Award
2017 Stanley Fahn Junior Faculty Award
2017 Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub Young Investigator
2016 Beckman Foundation Young Investigator
2016?Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface (CASI)
2015?Brain and Behavior Foundation Young Investigator Award (NARSAD)