Jamie A. Davies

StandardizeWd nomenclature is important to biology. Anatomical naming usually uses standard Greek- or Latin-derived terms to describe shape, but sometimes draws comparisons with everyday objects, aiming to reduce ambiguity and increase clarity. In the case of developing kidney, it did the opposite. In 1883 and 1889, two stages of nephron development were named after typographical characters, comma and ‘S’.

Abstract Recent advances in tissue engineering have been remarkable, yet the precise control of cellular behavior in 2D and 3D cultures remains challenging. One approach to address this limitation is to genomically engineer optogenetic control of cellular processes into tissues using gene switches that can operate with only a few genomic copies. Here, we implement blue and red light-responsive gene switches to engineer genomically stable two- and three-dimensional mammalian tissue models.