Jinyoung Kang and Margaret Schroeder

SHARPENING THE VIEW OF MOLECULAR STRUCTURES

Jinyoung Kang and Margaret Schroeder have developed a new imaging technique that could blow several
research fields wide open.

Kang – a former J. Douglas Tan Postdoctoral Fellow in the labs of Ed Boyden, Y. Eva Tan Professor in Neurotechnology, and Guoping Feng, Director of the Hock E. Tan and K. Lisa Yang Center for Autism Research at MIT and James W. (1963) and Patricia T. Poitras Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences – and Schroeder, a recent PhD student in the Hock E. Tan and K. Lisa Yang Center for Autism Research at MIT. have been collaborating on a new way to image proteins.

“Biologists want to see really tiny structures that most microscopes can’t see,” Schroeder explains. Over the last 10 years, the Boyden lab has pioneered methods to explode these very tiny molecular structures, taking them apart so that microscope lenses can enter the now-bigger spaces closer to target structures. The team’s latest tool. called Expansion Revealing or ExR. has been adopted by labs to study a range of conditions from kidney disease to Alzheimer’s.


Kang compares the proteins to strings of yarn, each protein a small tangle of a particular color. The Boyden lab advances were akin to pulling a coin-sized tangle of yarn apart. making the space between the strands of yarn big enough to spread over a hand, for example.

The most recent advance from Kang and Schroeder combines those previous gains with new processing techniques to allow for multichannel. extremely dense images, like seeing that same coin­sized tangle of yarn in a 3D model the size of a room.

“This version of the expansion [called multiExR] allows us to image up to 20 proteins in the same view,” Schroeder says. And, these technologies are ready to be implemented in labs across the world.

“This technique helps people visualize the relationship between proteins using common tools they have in their lab,” Schroeder says. To properly understand a recipe, one needs to know all the ingredients, Schroeder notes, and this new technique will allow that much more easily.

“We could combine multiple technologies like ExR. CRISPR. or proteomics to understand synapses more deeply,” Kang says. “We can expand our understanding of neurobiology and what causes disease. It can give us evidence for therapeutic targets.” If researchers can see exactly which protein is misbehaving, it will be easier to create therapies to get it back in line.

By providing scientists with clearer pictures of biological machinery, Kang and Schroeder are opening new windows into the inner workings of the body and mind. “We have great complementary expertise,” Schroder says.