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Making molecular tools out of DNA

15th February 2017. 
Björn Högberg, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm. 

The 3rd College C Milstein lecture and the Annual lecture of the Department of Molecular Medicine will be presented at the 2017 Life Science Symposium on February 15th by Björn Högberg a scientist at the Karolinsla Institute (Stockholm) and is entitled Building Molecular Tools out of DNA. The poster of the lecture can be downloaded here.

Lecture Synopsis. DNA is not only a carrier of genetic information but also an excellent building material for nanoscale engineering. I will present our recent work on ‘3D-printing’ DNA origami, a method that allows full computer aided design and provides a way to make DNA origami nanostructures more accessible to experiments in physiological conditions. The last part is important, because not only are DNA origami structures cool in themselves, they can help us learn important lessons about how biology works on the nanoscale. In my talk I will go through how we use these nanostructures to look at cell-cell signaling and how nanoscale clustering of ligands affects receptor signaling. I will show you how these DNA origami techniques are currently forming the basis for what might possibly become a new era of precise spatial control in biology.

Biographical Sketch.. Björn Högberg is an Associate professor of nanomedicine at the Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics Department at the Karolinska Institute. He got his PhD in physics from Mid Sweden University in 2007 and did his post-doc at the Harvard Mecial School in Boston the following years. Since late 2010 he has been leading a research group at the Karolinska in Stockholm. He is a leader in the field of DNA nanotechnology and in particular their biological research applications. Since starting his own lab he has consistently published with high impact and was recently awarded with several prestigious grants including a Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation Academy Fellows and an ERC consolidator.

Selected publications
[1] Benson E, Mohammed A, Gardell J,  Masich S, Czeizler E, Orponen P and Högberg B, DNA rendering of polyhedral meshes at the nanoscale,  Nature, 523 p. 441 (2015)

[2] Shaw A, Lundin V, Petrova E, Fördős F, Benson E, Al-Amin A, Herland A, Blokzijl A, Högberg B* and  Teixeira A*, Spatial control of membrane receptor function using ligand nanocalipers, Nature Meth, 11 p. 841 (2014) [3] Ducani C, Kaul C, Moche M, Shih WM and Högberg B, Enzymatic production of ‘monoclonal stoichiometric’ single-stranded DNA oligonucleotides, Nature Meth, 10, p. 647 (2013)