Xiaojun "Lance" Lian , associate professor of biomedical engineering and of biology at Penn State, alongside biomedical engineering doctoral candidate Tahir Haideri contributed to a paper recently published in Matter. The research, led by scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), introduced a physical system that squeezes cells, temporarily loosening the DNA inside and making space for gene-editing tools to reach the target genes.
The team said this is an improvement upon previous approaches because it enables a better yield of cell reprogramming, when researchers can coax one cell type to turn into another cell type. Lian and Haideri supported the research by guiding the molecular engineering of reprogramming cells from one type to another, building on their prior work improving how gene-editing tools are delivered to the cell's genetic material.
