Lighting Up the Laboratory

Molecular and Cellular Biology concentrator Amy Guan ’12 is taking the research world by storm, performing cutting-edge research with super-charged fluorescent proteins in the lab of MCB Professor David Liu.

Last October, Guan began working with the green fluorescent protein (GFP) to “improve activities of proteins and enzymes.”

According to Guan, part of the theory behind her research, discovered by members of the lab team she works with, is that proteins that are not water-soluble tend to clump together, thereby diminishing the ability of each protein to function. When the residues of these GFP proteins are positively charged, however, they have the ability to penetrate cell walls. Additionally, these super-charged proteins demonstrated the ability to carry nucleic, and even genomic, material into cells if the material was negatively charged.

Guan didn’t seek out the Liu lab; rather, her interest in directed evolution, a major part of her life since her junior year of high school, allowed it to effectively find her.

Guan, a resident of Eliot House from Florida, was born in China and has lived in four countries to date because of her mother’s occupation. The summer before starting her job at the Liu laboratory, Guan attended the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition (iGEM), in which student teams design and create biological systems in living cells. David Thompson, the graduate student who is currently running the project Guan is working on, happened to be the teaching fellow working with Guan’s group at iGEM.

“[After the competition], he contacted me directly to join the lab,” Guan said.

Her project on super-charged proteins will likely have significant medicinal value in the near future.

“These supercharged fluorescent proteins may hold promise,” Guan said, “as a very nontoxic, very efficient way to deliver therapeutic agents into cells.”

Investors are beginning to take notice, as some are currently looking into the research being done by Guan and the others working in the Liu laboratory. But, clearly, the proteins aren’t the only things in the lab with a promising future.

“[Amy is very] technically skilled, has good ‘lab hands,’” Thompson said. “[She is] better than any undergrads I’ve worked with, better than some grad students. [She’s] excitable and enthusiastic about science in general, and about her research projects in particular.”

“[This] is extremely important in research science,” he added. “Because 9/10 things you do will fail, and you need to keep your head up to stop from floundering… Amy seems to have that excitability, and sense of wonder.”

Guan is in the research business for the long haul. She plans to continue working in the Liu laboratory to complete her thesis and take her investigations to the next level.

“I want to go to grad school, [to study] either biology or chemical biology,” Guan said. “This is probably what I’m going to do for the rest of my life.”

Though many of the details concerning the current experiments going on in the Liu laboratory are classified information, Guan continues to help the team investigate properties of the GFP proteins and expand upon recent discoveries.