{"id":230412,"date":"2026-02-03T01:38:45","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T07:38:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/two-step-approach-creates-more-sustainable-protein-nanostructures-for-advanced-sensing-and-therapeutics"},"modified":"2026-02-03T01:38:45","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T07:38:45","slug":"two-step-approach-creates-more-sustainable-protein-nanostructures-for-advanced-sensing-and-therapeutics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/two-step-approach-creates-more-sustainable-protein-nanostructures-for-advanced-sensing-and-therapeutics","title":{"rendered":"Two-step approach creates more sustainable protein nanostructures for advanced sensing and therapeutics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/two-step-approach-creates-more-sustainable-protein-nanostructures-for-advanced-sensing-and-therapeutics.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Gas vesicles are among the largest known protein nanostructures produced and assembled inside microbial cells. These hollow, air-filled cylindrical nanostructures found in certain aquatic microbes have drawn increasing interest from scientists due to their potential for practical applications, including as part of novel diagnostic and therapeutic tools. However, producing gas vesicles is a difficult task for cells in the lab, hindering the development of applications.<\/p>\n<p>In a study recently <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-025-67667-8\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i><i>Nature Communications<\/i>,<\/i> a team of researchers led by Rice University bioengineer George Lu reports the development of a new genetic regulatory system to improve cell viability during the production of gas vesicles.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn the past few years, studies have shown that <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2023-09-approach-cells-enable-molecular-medical.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">gas vesicles<\/a>\u2019 ability to reflect sound makes them useful as unique and versatile acoustic reporter systems for biomedical research and clinical applications,\u201d said Lu, an assistant professor in the Department of Bioengineering at Rice\u2019s George R. Brown School of Engineering and Computing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gas vesicles are among the largest known protein nanostructures produced and assembled inside microbial cells. These hollow, air-filled cylindrical nanostructures found in certain aquatic microbes have drawn increasing interest from scientists due to their potential for practical applications, including as part of novel diagnostic and therapeutic tools. However, producing gas vesicles is a difficult task [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,11,412,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics","category-nanotechnology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230412\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}