Neurotransmitter Imaging and Plant Nanobionics

NEUROTRANSMITTER IMAGING AND PLANT NANOBIONICS Interview with Professor Markita Landry BY CATRIN BAILEY, ISABEL CRAIG, NIKHIL CHARI, YANA PETRI, ELENA SLOBODYANYUK Dr. Markita Landry is an Assistant Professor of Chem- ical and Biomedical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Landry’s laboratory focuses on understanding and exploiting optical nanomaterials to access information about biological systems. In this interview, we discuss semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) and their applications in the detection of dopamine in the brain and biological cargo delivery to plant systems. Professor Markita Landry [Source: UC Berkeley College of Chemis- ing biophysics tools in engineering space. That's how I ended up here as well. BSJ Chemical and Biomedical Engineering? : What has made you so interested in optical I trained in Physics for my undergraduate BSJ nanomaterials and nano-sensor design? ML degree and Ph.D. The focus of my Ph.D. work was to study molecular interactions. To do so, There is a lot of opportunity in developing our lab developed high spatial and temporal reso- ML nanosensors, especially for molecules that : How did you first get involved in the field of lution instruments, which were well-suited for the systems that we were studying. When I graduated, I felt that these instruments were more broadly appli- cable and wanted to translate their use into nano- technology. For my postdoc, I planned to come back to physics and then apply nanotechnology tools, but biophysics tools ended up being really useful for nanotechnology. That's how I was introduced to Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering: by build- Berkeley Scientific Journal | SPRING 2017 are otherwise very difficult to access information from. For example, when we diagnose something like cancer, we use quantitative methods: typically, a blood screen for biomarkers and then an assay that shows how many cytokines are in the blood. For behavioral disorders like psychosis and depression, we have only very qualitative methods. That's where my interests are: in the more challenging areas to develop sensors for. I'm trying to make diagnosis