Andrew G. York

The 3d psf of the beads is going to be longer in the z-direction of o2, right? Which is not parallel to your piezo scan.

More important: how are you thermally stabilizing your o2o3 subsystem? I prefer the aluminum crossbrace over active piezo based stabilization

cc @tanner-fadero.bsky.social

Magnetically sensitive proteins could lead to new imaging tools and remote-controlled drugs New study shows how engineered proteins can be tracked with an MRI-like approach

Here's the other one:

www.science.org/content/arti...

‘Remote controlled’ proteins illuminate living cells The discovery that some fluorescent proteins are sensitive to magnets could lead to the development of switchable drugs and biosensors.

Thanks, Rita! I was pretty darn happy that the journalists at Nature (and Science) were kind enough to write up the story of Maria's discoveries.

I appreciate y'all, it really helps our mission.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

I really enjoyed the article, @ecallaway.bsky.social

Thanks for digging in to this story! I want to see this field grow, and journalism like this helps tremendously.

‘Remote controlled’ proteins illuminate living cells The discovery that some fluorescent proteins are sensitive to magnets could lead to the development of switchable drugs and biosensors.

Researchers have engineered magnetically controlled fluorescent proteins that can be remotely dimmed and brightened in cells and living animals

go.nature.com/3NUSY12

‘Remote controlled’ proteins illuminate living cells The discovery that some fluorescent proteins are sensitive to magnets could lead to the development of switchable drugs and biosensors.

‘Remote controlled’ proteins illuminate living cells www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪

Quantum spin resonance in engineered proteins for multimodal sensing - Nature A recently developed class of magneto-sensitive fluorescent proteins are engineered to alter the properties of their response to magnetic fields and radio frequencies, enabling multimodal sensing of b...

Our research on magneto-sensitive fluorescent proteins and some of their applications has now been published!

Huge thank you to the many many people involved in making this happen. 🧪

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our snouty v3 (AMS-AGY v3) objective arrived today! Looking forward to getting it installed on our single objective light sheet system very soon...

Thanks, Merlin!

Hey awesome! What data would you like to see? Maybe we should have a zoom call?

An image of the Argentina team

An image of the San Francisco team

An image of Max

Shoutout to the SF crew:
Richard Fuisz, Rebecca Frank Hayward, and Paige Creeks...

...and the SF crew:
Paula Wagner, Andres Dekanty, Regina Mencia, Nadia Gonzalez, Clara Ingaramo, María Jesús Leopold and Pablo Torti

and of course, Max Novendstern :D

Nonfiction Laboratories Remote-controlled therapeutics, now nonfiction.

I'm pretty damn proud of the team at Maria's company:
www.nonfictionlaboratories.com

The team is split across SF and SF:
San Francisco California, and Santa Fe, Argentina (Maria's hometown!)

And now Maria's showed (small) magnetic actuation of antibody function - the first (huge) step towards a new way to make drugs safer and more effective.

We're predicting it can be engineered until it's big.

Do you think we're right?

Quantum Spin Resonance in Engineered Magneto-Sensitive Fluorescent Proteins Enables Multi-Modal Sensing in Living Cells Quantum mechanical phenomena have been identified as fundamentally significant to an increasing number of biological processes. Simultaneously, quantum sensing is emerging as a cutting-edge technology...

When Maria discovered and engineered proteins that respond to DC magnetic fields, we predicted proteins could also be controlled by *AC* magnetic fields - magnetic resonance. And that came true, too!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

When Maria engineered MagLOV (a fluorescent protein with a strong magnetoresponse), we predicted it could turn the function of OTHER proteins on and off - and that's exactly what she did!

twitter.com/AndrewGYork/...

It's a LONG walk from a new antibody to a new cancer drug. But the most miraculous steps already happened.

When Maria discovered weak magnetoresponse in fluorescent proteins, we predicted it could be engineered into a strong response - and that's exactly what she did!

twitter.com/AndrewGYork/...

Exclusive: Fridge Magnet Medicine Nonfiction Labs is engineering proteins that respond to magnetic fields and betting it can change how we treat cancer

If we can control biofluorescence with a magnet, what OTHER biology can we control?

What other biology SHOULD we control?

We decided to try antibodies first, to enable better, safer cancer drugs:
www.corememory.com/p/exclusive-...
cc @ashleevance.bsky.social

Magnetic Control of Proteins: More than a Dream Magnetoresponsive proteins have seemed like a dream... but Andrew York's lab has developed and deposited one, opening the possibility of magnetoresponsive tools!

3x is a small effect, but that's always how things start.

Maria's specialty is "directed evolution" - given a protein with nonzero magnetoresponse, she mutates and screens the protein to enhance the effect.

Here's how Maria used directed evolution to make MagLOV: blog.addgene.org/magnetic-con...

A scientific plot, showing how the binding affinity of a magnetically-controlled nanobody changes when a magnetic field is applied. A 40 millitesla field reduces the nanobody's binding affinity by about threefold.

Here's binding curves, with and without a ~40 mT magnetic field.

We estimate a handheld magnet changes the binding affinity by ~3x.

This is the world's first (real) demonstration of "magnetogenetics" - controlling protein function with nontoxic, tissue-penetrating magnetic fields.

Great news! @mariaingaramo.bsky.social 's company (Nonfiction Labs) made a remote-controlled antibody.

Its binding turns on and off with a magnet.

This is a HUGE step towards our dream of magnetically controlled drugs. Imagine a cancer drug that ONLY attacks the tumor, not the rest of your body.

We’re thrilled to feature Dr. Tanner Fadero from the Chan Zuckerberg Imaging Institute in an upcoming Nature-hosted webinar about... PHOTONS! 😎 Join the webinar to learn and take part in the live Q&A. 👉 Register here: https://ow.ly/vsyn50XkZ88

#FluorescenceMicroscopy #LightSheetMicroscopy

I love the 10%/90% science-to-venting ratio in this tweet.

Ahhhh that makes sense, the halfway point sucks.

In my experience, the hardest part of teaching a biologist to code is uninstalling the three extra versions of python they have on their Mac (brew, conda, etc), and relearning basic crap that Mac obfuscates like "file paths".

I've never failed, when I try this. I've done it on Windows and Linux. I don't do anything fancy, I follow the default instructions. What goes wrong for you?

This press release is bizarre. We've had the iSIM and the SoRa as commercial products for almost a decade now.

How can you ignore a technique that's widely distributed and strictly superior? Do you just not know about it?

cc @tanner-fadero.bsky.social

That's why we use the alignment crane: thousands of dollars worth of 3d precision that detaches post-alignment, leaving only a solid steel post/clamp that's nearly incapable of drift.

A. Structure of AsLOV2 PDB~2V1A (Halavaty, 2007) with mutations resulting in MagLOV~2 highlighted. Spin transitions driven by radio-frequency (RF) fields in the presence of a static magnetic field are optically detected via fluorescence measurements on an otherwise standard widefield microscope. Similar effects have recently been observed in other protein systems (Burd 2025, Meng 2025, Feder 2025). B. Simplified photocycle diagram in the case of a large external magnetic field. C. A single cell expressing MagLOV 2 displaying an MFE of ~50% (measured as a change in fluorescence intensity in the presence of an applied field). For MFE measurements, the magnetic field was switched between 0 mT and 10 mT. D. Black dots: data from a single cell expressing MagLOV 2 displaying an ODMR signal with ~10% contrast. The static field B_0 is ~21.6 mT. Blue line (shade): the mean (std) of all single cell data in a field of view (~1000 cells). E. The static magnetic field B_0 was varied by adjusting the magnet's position, and ODMR spectra recorded. Red-lines are Lorentzian fits. Blue line is a theoretical prediction (i.e. is not a fit) of the expected resonance frequency of an electron spin with $\bar\gamma_e$=28 MHz/mT.

Electronics, radio electronics, optical parts, and an animal sized MRI coil are assembled to perform fluorescence MRI measurements using MagLOV.

MagLOV quantum sensing update! Much improved imaging (>10% single cell ODMR contrast), detailed characterisation and simulation, and new experimental demonstrations taking us a step closer to applications.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

SI: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I think my speakers aren't working, I can't hear the Benny Hill music?

How many photons are in a GFP? — more than last year, and more than you thought. Here's a simple, cheap, and practical method to break a fundamental limit in fluorescence microscopy. But it only works in light sheet!