Abstract #1988

Biosynthesis of an Activatable Fluorescent MRI Contrast Agent

Harvey D. Lee^1,2, Connor J. Grady^1,2, Christiane L. Mallett^1,3, Md Nafiujjaman^1,2, Nathan M. Good⁴, N. Cecilia Martinez-Gomez⁴, Taeho Kim^1,2, Erik M. Shapiro^1,3, and Assaf A. Gilad^1,2,3

¹Department of Biomedical Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States, ²Division of Synthetic Biology, Institute for Quantitative Health Sciences and Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States, ³Department of Radiology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States, ⁴Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States

Synopsis

Sustainable products are becoming an integral part of our daily lives - in this study, we biosynthetically produced an MRI contrast agent from E.coli with an r1 of 6.0 (per-gadolinium, 7T field strength, room temperature) that provides the user with optical feedback through a jump in green fluorescence upon binding free gadolinium in solution. We anticipate this will reduce the amount of resources spent on quality control (in assessing the amount of unchelated gadolinium that could otherwise introduce toxicity), whereas its compatibility with lyophilization is expected to improve storage conditions in terms of longevity, stability, and transportation costs.

This abstract and the presentation materials are available to members only; a login is required.

Join Here