B. Clarke, chief reporter and editor-in-chief
Click images for larger views
11/2024 - Lihua and Mingyu's "Racoon Team" wins 3rd place in the Pharmacology Fall 2024 Pickleball tourney! Way to go Lihua and Mingyu! Woohoo!
11/2 024 - We welcomed three new team members this fall - research associate, Michael Tran, MD/PhD graduate student, Greg Alspaugh and postdoc, Chunlei Zhang! We're very happy to have them join us!
11/2024 - Lab alumni, Eric Vitriol, won first place in the Nikon Small World Imaging Micrography Competition along with collaborator, Bruno Cisterno, with their image, "Differentiated mouse brain tumor cells x100," which can be viewed in Science Alert in this article by Tessa Koumoundourous: "Award-Winning Image Reveals a Hidden Culprit Behind Alzheimers."
Detail from the first place image. Congratulations, Eric!
10/2024 - We went pumpkin carving with goats!
09/2024 - Klaus taught a course together with his co-directors Gaudenz Danuser and Kevin Dean at the UTSW-UNC Center for Cell Signaling Analysis. Core directors from throughout the country were presented in depth instruction over two weeks, including labs, enabling them to disseminate new technologies. The Center develops and provides user-friendly methods to combine new biosensors, opto/chemogenetic approaches, microscopes and imaging technologies. Gabe provided capable and inspiring instruction of our biosensor labs.
09/2024 - Joe gave an invited talk at the Triangle Cytoskeleton Meeting on "Illuminating Mechanotransduction in Breast Cancer Metastasis Using Optogenetic Vinculin and SPECTr, a Simple and Sensitive Method to Visualize Conformational Changes"
09/2024 - Congratulations to Gabe for winning a poster award at the 2024 Triangle Cytoskeleton Meeting! The title of the poster was"SPECTR-Talin: Biosensors that report the stretch-mediated opening of specific talin domains."
09/2024 - Congratulations to Mingyu for wining a Best Oral Presentation award at the Pharmacology 2024 Research Retreat at Haw River State Park!
The title of his talk was "AlloSensors: leveraging allosteric sites to develop minimally perturbing biosensors.” Here is Mingyu (far left) together with other oral and poster presentation award winners and Pharmacology chair, Henrik Dohlman (far right).
04/2024 - We held a spring retreat at Merchant’s Millpond!It's a great place and we had perfect weather for camping, hiking, and paddling on the lake, plus lots of good eating and sitting around a campfire!
02/2024 - Klaus has been awarded a Chan Zuckerberg Initiative grant to monitor and manipulate proteins important in nervous system function and neurological disease. Klaus will co-lead a project titled, "Research Triangle: Revealing the Hidden Topologies of the Human Kinome" with Scott Solderling, PhD, of Duke University and Albert Keung, PhD,of North Carolina State University. The Hahn lab's ability to see and control kinase activities in real time will be utilized to start and stop kinase activity in living brains with the goal to better understand how kinase circuitry is controlled and ultimately to identify new therapeutic targets in the brain.
12/2023 – Joe Szulczewski gave a talk in the minisymposiua Mechanobiology across Scale at the Annual ASCB|EMBO Cell Bio conference. He presented a poster, too.
02/2023 – Hats off to Joe Szulczewski who was co-chair for the Cell Migration section at the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting 2023! He also gave a talk titled, “Probing mechanotransduction pathways in breast cancer metastasis through visualization and control of vinculin conformation.”
11/2022 –Michelle Digman from UCI visited the lab for October and November. Michelle shared some new lab technique while collaboraing on a research project with us.
10/2022 – The lab held a fall retreat at the Spring Haven Goat Farm in Chapel Hill! 
We had a lot of fun carving pumpkins with the baby goats who like to eat the pumpkin insides!
10/2022 – Congratulations to Saygin Gulec! He received a tuition and travel award to attend the 16th CSF Advanced Imaging Workshop at the University of California – Irvine, October 23-28.
06/2022 – NIH has awarded funding for the UNC UTSW Center for Cell Signaling Analysis! Klaus is Co-Directors of the Center along with Gaudenz Danuser at UTSW.
05/2022 – Klaus’s MIRA has been renewed! This continues support for the “Dissecting signaling in vivo via precise control and visualization of protein activity” research project.
03/2022 – Congratulations to Saygin Gulec, who has been accepted into the Molecular and Cellular Biophysics Program. He will also receive a T32 trainee fellowship for the 2022-2023 academic year from the program! This will give Saygin extra training in biophysics in addition to his PhD program in BCB.
01/2022 - Folks in the press noticed our recent article in Cell. It was highlighted in UNC Health Care News and the Royal Institute of Australia's Cosmos Magazine selected it as one of the "Top 10 Science Videos of 2021." Cell:2021,184(22):5670-5685
10/2021 - The Hahn and Elston Labs published a paper in Cell entitled “Biosensors
based on peptide exposure show single molecule conformations live cells.”
It describes a new approach that simplifies biosensor engineering and produces a bright signal capable of reporting the conformation of single molecules within living cells. This was a team effort on many levels, with three lead authors – Bei Liu, Orrin Stone and Mike Pablo, and important contributions from lab members Cody Herron, Ana T. Nogueira, Onur Dagliyan, and our collaborators from Janelia – Jonathan Grimm and Luke Lavis. The online only version is available through November at Bei Liu, et al. Cell, 2021:Oct 11;.
07/2021 – Dr. Hahn is part of a group of researchers funded by the Sloan Foundation to develop ‘living materials’, groups of cells and artificial systems that are engineered to change their shape in response to diverse stimuli. The group includes PIs with a focus on molecular modeling, cell biology, systems biology and protein structure.
03/2021 - Hats off to Mingyu Choi for winning an NSF fellowship to study how podosomes test the mechanical properties of their environment, and how they regulate phagocytosis. He will develop analogs of adhesion proteins that control and report tension in podosome components, to examine signal oscillations thought to coordinate podosome behavior.
01/2021 – Dr. Hahn and Dr. Gaudenz Danuser of UTSW were awarded a Bioengineering Research Grant from the National Cancer Institute to invent and apply novel technologies for untangling complex signaling circuits in cancer. They will combine biosensors, optogenetics and new analytical methods to understand how protein activities are linked in real time during migration and metastasis.
07/2020 - Congratulations to Joe Szulczewski, who was just accepted into the Lineberger Cancer Center Model Systems training program. Joe will be studying mechanical stresses on the cell that drive durotaxis and metastasis.
07/2020 - We are fired up about a new paper led by Dan Marston.
Thanks to everyone who brought this together, and to Dean E. Natwick & Sean R. Collins for their discussion in the Nature Chem Bio highlight entitled “Decoding GEFs of animated cells.” The paper describes a new biosensor approach for studying GEFS, developed together with the Sondek lab, and applies it in multiplexed imaging of GEF and GTPase signaling. The data is analyzed by the Danuser lab (our long term collaborators at UTSW) using a statistical approach to dissect out causal links between different protein activation events in living cells (Nat Chem Biol, 16: 826–833, 2020; free sharing link). Way to go, Dan!
07/2020 - Congratulations to Mingyu Choi, who was accepted into the MiBio training program at UNC. He will interact with a community of scientists using diverse methods in mechanistic, interdisciplinary studies of biological systems. Mingyu will be studying oscillating signaling circuits and how they drive immune cell function.
11/2019 - We’re happy to celebrate the graduation of Dr. Frank Teets!
Frank will be a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Protein Innovation, Harvard University. Congratulations, Frank!
10/2019 - Our frustrated phagocytosis image received honorable mention in the The Nikon Small World Competition!
Congrats to Ana, Shiqiong and Takashi!
05/2019 - iPalm of frustrated phagocytosis. 
Photo taken by Ana Nogueira, Shiqiong Hu, and Takashi Watanabe with our good friends at the @AICjanelia.
11/2018 - Klaus was nominated for the Pearse Prize from the Royal Microscopy Society. He is scheduled to present a plenary lecture and receive the award in England this July.
7/2018 - Here's wishing best of luck to Neha Kaul! She will be an AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow at the NSF Engineering Directorate!
05/2018 - Congratulations and much luck to Doctor Orrin Stone, now PhD.
Orrin developed a new method to ‘see’ the conformations of individual molecules in living cells, and engineered a genetically encoded optogenetic analog of cofilin. Orrin will be an Associate with McKinsey & Co. in July.
03/2018 - Congratulations to Mihai Azoitei!
Mihai has accepted a position as Assistant Professor
at Duke University in the the Department of Medicine and the Duke Human Vaccine Institute! We wish him all the best in his new position!
03/2018 - A new wave of talent has arrived! Welcome to our three newest postdocs - Shiqiong Hu, Ana Nogueira and Fred Pimenta.
02/2018 - We bid a fond farewell to Hui Wang who is taking on a new position as a Research Scientist with Arcellx, who develop biological treatments for cancer.
12/2017 - Congratulations to Nick Pinkin for receiving a Leader Development Award from the American Chemical Society! This award recognizes emerging leaders in their profession and helps them prepare for leadership opportunities in the ACS and their professional careers. Dan will participate in the ACS Young Chemists Committee Leadership Development Workshop in January.
11/2017 - Congratulations to Bei Liu and Orrin Stone, who won the Best Poster Award at the Annual Pharmaoclogy Research Retreat!
06/2017 - Congratulations to Orrin Stone for receiving an NIH ImPACT fellowship award that will enable him to intern at a Research Triangle pharmaceutical company. Orrin is also attending Bridge to BCG, a 3-day workshop for PhDs interested in consulting.
04/2017 - Hats off to Onur Dagliyan. Our recent paper (Engineering extrinsic disorder to control protein activity in living cells) just had write ups in Biotechniques, Nature Methods and Cell Systems. You can catch it in: Science 354:1441-1444. Onur describes the attachment of engineered domains to the surface of proteins to confer control by light or small molecules.
11/2016 - Our thanks to the Biophysical Society who have provided Mihai Azoitei with a travel award to attend the annual Biophysical Society meeting.
11/2016 - Here's to Mihai Azoitei, who just won the UNC Postdoctoral Award for Excellence in Mentoring undergraduates!
08/2016 - Congratulations to Nick Pinkin who has received an NIH F32 postdoctoral fellowship!
08/2016 - Bei Liu and Hui Wang transport our new spin TIRF/photo-activation microscope,
constructed with Rich Superfine at his lab, to its new home.
07/2016 - Congratulations to Jason Yi, who has accepted a position as Assistant Professor
in the Department of Neuroscience at Washington University! We wish him all the best in his new position!
05/2016 - We bid farewell to Chris MacNevin, who is taking a position at NIRvana Sciences, a startup developing novel fluorophores and FACS technologies. Much luck and happiness to Chris!
03/2016 - Congratulations to our Dr. Onur Dagliyan, here celebrating his new PhD.
Onur is moving to his postdoc with Michael Greenburg at Harvard!
03/2016 - Hui Wang is invited to present a platform talk at the annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology, focused on his work in optogenetics. The talk is titled, “LOV and Zdark, a protein pair that dimerize selectively in the dark, provide a versatile optogenetic toolbox.”
03/2016 - Dr. Hahn and Dr. Patti Keely of U. Wisconsin were awarded an NIH R01 grant to study the role of the cancer microenvironment in controlling migration of metastatic cells.
10/2015 - Congratulations to Onur Dagliyan! Onur received the Lineberger Fellow Award, whose $5000 prize enabled him to upgrade his wheels.
09/2015 - First light on Bei Liu's home-designed single particle tracking scope!
08/2015 - Advanced Imaging Center at Janelia Call for Proposals July 31-Oct. 1, 2015.
Selected proposals will allow a scientist to spend 1-2 weeks (or more) at Janelia to conduct experiments on a microscope with the support of the AIC team. AIC microscopes have advanced capabilities that are not widely available. The Janelia Visitor Program will cover the cost of lodging for the visiting scientist, experiments, technical support from their applications scientists and scope time.
07/2015 - Welcome to Nick Pinkin, our new postdoctoral fellow! Nick will be developing novel dyes for in vivo single molecule imaging.
06/2015 - Congratulations to Denis Tsygankov, who has a new position as Assistant Professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University!
01/2015 - Welcome to Bei Liu, who is joining the lab as a postdoctoral fellow and will be extending biosensor imaging with single particle tracking, super resolution imaging and cryo-EM.
12/2014 - Contratulations to Denis Tsygankov, who received the 2015 UNC Junior Faculty Development Award and publishing 6 papers this year!
12/2014 - Orrin Stone and his research is highlighted in UNC School of Medicine News.
Click on the link to see his story, "Platform for Proteins". Orrin's research is focused on developing a simple, engineered domain that can be inserted into proteins to confer either light sensitivity or produce fluorescent biosensors. He is focused on adhesion dynamics and signaling.
12/2014 - Hui Wang was invited to present a platform talk to speak at the 2014 American Society for Cell Biology Meeting on "Resonator motifs in mechano-chemical signaling pathways revealed by a new optogenetic method for precise oscillation of signaling circuits."
06/2014 - Congratulations to Marie Rougie, our lab manager and imaging guru!
Marie received the 2014 Star Heel Award. In this surprise award, she was recognized by UNC and our department for her outstanding service.
04/2014 - Congratulations to Sheryl Fuehrer! Sheryl was awarded a Future Scientists and Clinicians fellowship from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute for her undergraduate research.
02/2014 - Klaus and Channing Der receive joint funding from the National Cancer Institute to study the role of Rho family effectors in pancreatic cancer.
10/2013 - Congrats and much luck to Pei–Hsuan Chu who just received her PhD and moved to the NIH to work with Dr. David Gerhold (NCATS).
10/2013 - Klaus will be heading a program project award working with John Sondek (UNC), Keith Burridge (UNC), Gaudenz Danuser (UTSW) and Alan Hall (Sloan Kettering) to study GEF/Rho GTPase signaling circuitry. We are grateful to the NIH for funding in these times when scientists are struggling to support their work.
10/2013 - Klaus and Dr. Brian Kuhlman have received an NIH R01 award to pursue a new research direction – control of epigenetic modifications using light.
10/2013 - Congratus to Hui Wang who received funding from the Arthritis Foundation to elucidate the signaling pathways of inflammatory processes.
10/2013 - Congrats to Chris MacNevin who was invited to present his work at the International Chemical Biology Society in Kyoto Japan, as part of a special session on chemical imaging.
08/2013 - Michael Guarino,
who worked with us as an undergraduate, completed his degree in computer science!
We are grateful for his computational models that provided unexpected insights into biosensor design, and how different designs contribute to perturbation of biological systems. Michael has moved on to a full time position at Amazon. We wish him much luck and all the best in his new career.
08/2013 – Welcome to Mihai Azoitei, who is joining the lab as a postdoctoral fellow to engineer GEF biosensors using novel screening and computational modeling approaches.
08/2013 – Welcome to Matt Weitzman, who is joining the lab as a postdoctoral fellow to look at the organization of signaling proteins during cell migration, and how membrane composition impacts events at the leading edge.
05/2013 – Welcome to Neha Kau, who is joining the lab as a postdoctoral fellow to work on microtubule dynamics, targeted intracellular transport and post translational modifications of tubulin.
04/2013 - Congratulations to Chris MacNevin!
Chris (at right in picture), placed second for his research poster entitled "The small molecule based biosensor CaMbio reports calmodulin activation dynamics in cells and in vivo." The 3rd Annual Oliver Smithies Nobel Symposium Postdoctoral Research Poster Forum was held Friday, April 19 at UNC. The forum provides an opportunity for fellows to hear inspiring stories presented by previous Nobel Prize winners and to highlight their current research. The poster presentations followed the keynote speech by Dr. Harold E. Varmus.
04/2013 - Denis Tsygankov was invited to give a platform talk abo on “Dissecting kinase-mediated pathways with temporal and spatial control of their activation” at the Moscow Conference on Computational Molecular Biology.
04/2013 - Welcome to Andrey Krokhotin, who is joining our lab and the lab of Nikolay Dokholyan to work on our collaborative project controlling Rho family GTPase networks with light.
02/2013 - Onur Dagliyan and Hui Wang presented platform talks at the Annual Meeting of the Biophysical Society!
Onu's talk is on “Rational design of protein conformational switch," and Hu's isi on “LOV-TRAP: A broadly applicable, genetically encoded system to control protein activity with light through controlled sequestration at membranes.”
12/2012- Hui Wang and Andrei Karginov are invited to speak at the 2012 American Society for Cell Biology meeting! Hui and Andrei will be describing their work on photomanipulation, and engineered allosteric control of proteins in living cells.
10/2012- Amy Hsu becomes Dr. Hsu - an impressive and amazing transformation on Halloween. Amy is leaving for her new haunts at the NIH.
08/2012- Onur Dagliyan has been awarded an MCC Travel Grant of $1000 is to attend "Exploring Protein Interactions through Theory and Experiements" on 2012-09-24.
08/2012- Onur Dagliyan wins a Howard Hughes International Research Fellowship to work on new methods to control protein activity in vivo using engineered allosteric regulation. Congratulations to Onur!!
07/2012- Goodbye and much luck to Janet Doolittle!
She just struck a triple play. Within one month she received the American Heart Association Predoctoral Fellowship, graduated with her PhD, and was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from the NextGen Oral Health program at UNC. She will be studying viral pathogenesis in the laboratory of Dr. Webster-Cyriaque.
07/2012- Klaus and Anna Huttenlocher of U. Wisc., Madison receive a multiPI grant from the NIH to develop a live cell imaging ‘toolchest’ for zebrafish research, focusing on photomanipulation, engineered allosteric activation and biosensors in studies of EMT.
07/2012- Klaus, Claire Doerschuck and Keith Burridge receive a multiPI grant from the NIH to study transendothelial migration in animals using multiplexed biosensors and Rho family photoactivation.
06/2012- Congratulations to Jason Yi, who has been invited to lecture at the 36th meeting of the American Society for Photobiology in Montreal, Canada, on techniques for controlling cell physiology with light.
06/2012- Scott Slattery receives American Heart Association fellowship to study the role of the cytoskeleton in transendothelial migration. Scott will be developing new approaches to control one signaling molecule while monitoring another in vivo.
