Optogenetic engineering of STING signaling allows remote immunomodulation to enhance cancer immunotherapy.

The cGAS-STING signaling pathway has emerged as a promising target for immunotherapy development. Here, we introduce a light-sensitive optogenetic device for control of the cGAS/STING signaling to conditionally modulate innate immunity, called 'light-inducible SMOC-like repeats' (LiSmore). We demonstrate that photo-activated LiSmore boosts dendritic cell (DC) maturation and antigen presentation with high spatiotemporal precision. This non-invasive approach photo-sensitizes cytotoxic T lymphocytes to engage tumor antigens, leading to a sustained antitumor immune response. When combined with an immune checkpoint blocker (ICB), LiSmore improves antitumor efficacy in an immunosuppressive lung cancer model that is otherwise unresponsive to conventional ICB treatment. Additionally, LiSmore exhibits an abscopal effect by effectively suppressing tumor growth in a distal site in a bilateral mouse model of melanoma. Collectively, our findings establish the potential of targeted optogenetic activation of the STING signaling pathway for remote immunomodulation in mice.

Light-activated macromolecular phase separation modulates transcription by reconfiguring chromatin interactions.

Biomolecular condensates participate in the regulation of gene transcription, yet the relationship between nuclear condensation and transcriptional activation remains elusive. Here, we devised a biotinylated CRISPR-dCas9-based optogenetic method, light-activated macromolecular phase separation (LAMPS), to enable inducible formation, affinity purification, and multiomic dissection of nuclear condensates at the targeted genomic loci. LAMPS-induced condensation at enhancers and promoters activates endogenous gene transcription by chromatin reconfiguration, causing increased chromatin accessibility and de novo formation of long-range chromosomal loops. Proteomic profiling of light-induced condensates by dCas9-mediated affinity purification uncovers multivalent interaction-dependent remodeling of macromolecular composition, resulting in the selective enrichment of transcriptional coactivators and chromatin structure proteins. Our findings support a model whereby the formation of nuclear condensates at native genomic loci reconfigures chromatin architecture and multiprotein assemblies to modulate gene transcription. Hence, LAMPS facilitates mechanistic interrogation of the relationship between nuclear condensation, genome structure, and gene transcription in living cells.

Proteomic mapping and optogenetic manipulation of membrane contact sites.

Membrane contact sites (MCSs) mediate crucial physiological processes in eukaryotic cells, including ion signaling, lipid metabolism, and autophagy. Dysregulation of MCSs is closely related to various diseases, such as type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), neurodegenerative diseases, and cancers. Visualization, proteomic mapping and manipulation of MCSs may help the dissection of the physiology and pathology MCSs. Recent technical advances have enabled better understanding of the dynamics and functions of MCSs. Here we present a summary of currently known functions of MCSs, with a focus on optical approaches to visualize and manipulate MCSs, as well as proteomic mapping within MCSs.

Ten-Eleven Translocation Ablation Impairs Cardiac Differentiation of Mouse Embryonic Stem Cells.

Ten-eleven Translocation (TET) dioxygenases mediated DNA methylation oxidation plays an important role in regulating the embryonic stem cells (ESCs) differentiation. Herein, we utilized a CRISPR/Cas9 based genome editing method to generate single, double, and triple Tet-deficient mouse ESCs (mESCs) and differentiated these cells toward cardiac progenitors. By using emerald green fluorescent protein (GFP; emGFP) expression under the control of Nkx2.5 promoter as marker for cardiac progenitor cells, we discovered that Tet1 and Tet2 depletion significantly impaired mESC-to-cardiac progenitor differentiation. Single-cell RNA-seq analysis further revealed that Tet deletion resulted in the accumulation of mesoderm progenitors to hamper cardiac differentiation. Re-expression of the Tet1 catalytic domain (Tet1CD) rescued the differentiation defect in Tet-triple knockout mESCs. Dead Cas9 (dCas9)-Tet1CD mediated loci-specific epigenome editing at the Hand1 loci validated the direct involvement of Tet-mediated epigenetic modifications in transcriptional regulation during cardiac differentiation. Our study establishes that Tet-mediated epigenetic remodeling is essential for maintaining proper transcriptional outputs to safeguard mESC-to-cardiac progenitor differentiation.

Identification of a STIM1 Splicing Variant that Promotes Glioblastoma Growth.

Deregulated store-operated calcium entry (SOCE) mediated by aberrant STIM1-ORAI1 signaling is closely implicated in cancer initiation and progression. Here the authors report the identification of an alternatively spliced variant of STIM1, designated STIM1ß, that harbors an extra exon to encode 31 additional amino acids in the cytoplasmic domain. STIM1ß, highly conserved in mammals, is aberrantly upregulated in glioma tissues to perturb Ca2+ signaling. At the molecular level, the 31-residue insertion destabilizes STIM1ß by perturbing its cytosolic inhibitory domain and accelerating its activation kinetics to efficiently engage and gate ORAI calcium channels. Functionally, STIM1ß depletion affects SOCE in glioblastoma cells, suppresses tumor cell proliferation and growth both in vitro and in vivo. Collectively, their study establishes a splicing variant-specific tumor-promoting role of STIM1ß that can be potentially targeted for glioblastoma intervention.

Targeting epigenetic regulatory machinery to overcome cancer therapy resistance.

Drug resistance, either intrinsic or acquired, represents a major hurdle to achieving optimal therapeutic outcomes during cancer treatment. In addition to acquisition of resistance-conferring genetic mutations, accumulating evidence suggests an intimate involvement of the epigenetic machinery in this process as well. Recent studies have revealed that epigenetic reprogramming, such as altered expression or relocation of DNA/histone modulators accompanied with chromatin structure remodeling, can lead to transcriptional plasticity in tumor cells, thereby driving their transformation towards a persistent state. These "persisters" represent a pool of slow-growing cells that can either re-expand when treatment is discontinued or acquire permanent resistance. Targeting epigenetic reprogramming or plasticity represents a new strategy to prevent the emergence of drug-refractory populations and to enable more consistent clinical responses. With the growing numbers of drugs or drug candidates developed to target epigenetic regulators, more and more epigenetic therapies are under preclinical evaluation, early clinical trials or approved by FDA as single agent or in combination with existing antitumor drugs. In this review, we highlight latest discoveries in the mechanistic understanding of epigenetically-induced drug resistance. In parallel, we discuss the potential of combining epigenetic drugs with existing anticancer regimens as a promising strategy for overcoming cancer drug resistance.

Optogenetic control of calcium influx in mammalian cells.

Optogenetics combines optics and genetics to enable non-invasive interrogation of cell physiology at an unprecedented high spatiotemporal resolution. Here, we introduce Opto-CRAC as a set of genetically-encoded calcium actuators (GECAs) engineered from the calcium release-activated calcium (CRAC) channel, which has been tailored for optical control of calcium entry and calcium-dependent physiological responses in non-excitable cells and tissues. We describe a detailed protocol for applying Opto-CRAC as an optogenetic tool to achieve photo-tunable control over intracellular calcium signals and calcium-dependent gene expression in mammalian cells.

Expanding the Chemogenetic Toolbox by Circular Permutation.

To expand the repertoire of chemogenetic tools tailored for molecular and cellular engineering, we describe herein the design of cpRAPID as a circularly permuted rapamycin-inducible dimerization system composed of the canonical FK506-binding protein (FKBP) and circular permutants of FKBP12-rapamycin binding domain (cpFRB). By permuting the topology of the four helices within FRB, we have created cpFRB-FKBP pairs that respond to ligand with varying activation kinetics and dynamics. The cpRAPID system enables chemical-controllable subcellular redistribution of proteins, as well as inducible transcriptional activation when coupled with the CRISPR activation (CRISPRa) technology to induce a GFP reporter and endogenous gene expression. We have further demonstrated the use of cpRAPID to generate chemically switchable split nanobody (designated Chessbody) for ligand-gated antigen recognition in living cells. Collectively, the circular permutation approach offers a powerful means for diversifying the chemogenetics toolbox to benefit the burgeoning synthetic biology field.

Visible light excited ratiometric-GECIs for long-term in-cellulo monitoring of calcium signals.

Genetically Encoded Calcium Indicators (GECIs) are powerful molecular tools for monitoring calcium (Ca2+) signaling in the cytosol and organellar compartments. However, currently available ratiometric indicators that allow measurements of resting Ca2+ levels have limitations in long-term Ca2+ imaging. They either are ultraviolet (UV)-excited ones with strong photo-toxicity, or have poor performance. To overcome this hurdle, we developed a set of visible light excited ratiometric-GECIs (VR-GECIs) based on existing mono-colored GECIs. With performance comparable to their corresponding mono-color prototypes, this set of VR-GECIs enables long-term measurements of intra-cellular or intra-organellar Ca2+ signals. Using these VR-GECIs together with a newly developed off-line analysis tool, we achieved long-term measurements of Ca2+ homeostasis of moving or dividing cells. Our tools may find broad applications in decoding Ca2+-modulated physiological or pathological processes.

Optogenetic engineering to probe the molecular choreography of STIM1-mediated cell signaling.

Genetically encoded photoswitches have enabled spatial and temporal control of cellular events to achieve tailored functions in living cells, but their applications to probe the structure-function relations of signaling proteins are still underexplored. We illustrate herein the incorporation of various blue light-responsive photoreceptors into modular domains of the stromal interaction molecule 1 (STIM1) to manipulate protein activity and faithfully recapitulate STIM1-mediated signaling events. Capitalizing on these optogenetic tools, we identify the molecular determinants required to mediate protein oligomerization, intramolecular conformational switch, and protein-target interactions. In parallel, we have applied these synthetic devices to enable light-inducible gating of calcium channels, conformational switch, dynamic protein-microtubule interactions and assembly of membrane contact sites in a reversible manner. Our optogenetic engineering approach can be broadly applied to aid the mechanistic dissection of cell signaling, as well as non-invasive interrogation of physiological processes with high precision.