AZAD LAB for Synthetic Biology
Université de Sherbrooke, Faculté de Médecine et des Sciences de la Santé,
Département de microbiologie et d'infectiologie
Development of Novel Biosensors for Infectious Disease and Cancer Research
Luciferase based biosensors:
Several different reporter fragment complementation-based strategies have been employed to interrogate protein-protein interactions , including split-luciferase schemes. The two halves of the luciferase protein are linked to two possible interacting proteins in this technique. When the two candidate proteins engage, the halves of luciferase complement each other, and luciferase activity is restored. We have used this technology to create a biosensor for a variety of applications, including biosensors for apoptosome formation assay, LATS1 activity, YAP/TAZ interaction with TEAD, and SARS-CoV-2 Spike interaction with ACE2.
What we do
We create diverse luciferase-based biosensors to investigate various biological phenomena, including the dysregulation of signaling pathways in cancer and the interactions between host and pathogen in emerging infectious diseases.
Selected Publications:
5. Identification of FDA-approved bifonazole as a SARS-CoV-2 blocking agent following a bioreporter drug screen, Zaid Taha, Rozanne Arulanandam, Glib Maznyi, Elena Godbout, Madalina E Carter-Timofte, Naziia Kurmasheva, Line S Reinert, Andrew Chen, Mathieu JF Crupi, Stephen Boulton, Geneviève Laroche, Alexandra Phan, Reza Rezaei, Nouf Alluqmani, Anna Jirovec, Alexandra Acal, Emily EF Brown, Ragunath Singaravelu, Julia Petryk, Manja Idorn, Kyle G Potts, Hayley Todesco, Cini John, Douglas J Mahoney, Carolina S Ilkow, Patrick Giguère, Tommy Alain, Marceline Côté, Søren R Paludan, David Olagnier, John C Bell, Taha Azad, Jean-Simon Diallo, Molecular Therapy, 2022.
4. SARS-CoV-2 S1 NanoBiT: A nanoluciferase complementation-based biosensor to rapidly probe SARS-CoV-2 receptor recognition, Taha Azad, Ragunath Singaravelu, Emily EF Brown, Zaid Taha, Reza Rezaei, Rozanne Arulanandam, Stephen Boulton, Jean-Simon Diallo, Carolina S Ilkow, John C Bell, Biosensors and Bioelectronics, 2021.
3. Nanoluciferase complementation-based bioreporter reveals the importance of N-linked glycosylation of SARS-CoV-2 S for viral entry, Taha Azad, Ragunath Singaravelu, Zaid Taha, Taylor R Jamieson, Stephen Boulton, Mathieu JF Crupi, Nikolas T Martin, Emily EF Brown, Joanna Poutou, Mina Ghahremani, Adrian Pelin, Kazem Nouri, Reza Rezaei, Christopher Boyd Marshall, Masahiro Enomoto, Rozanne Arulanandam, Nouf Alluqmani, Reuben Samson, Anne-Claude Gingras, D William Cameron, Peter A Greer, Carolina S Ilkow, Jean-Simon Diallo, John C Bell, Molecular Therapy, 2021.
2.A gain-of-functional screen identifies the Hippo pathway as a central mediator of receptor tyrosine kinases during tumorigenesis, Taha Azad, Kazem Nouri, Helena J Janse van Rensburg, Sarah M Maritan, Liqing Wu, Yawei Hao, Tess Montminy, Jihang Yu, Prem Khanal, Lois M Mulligan, Xiaolong Yang, Oncogene, 2020.
1. A LATS biosensor screen identifies VEGFR as a regulator of the Hippo pathway in angiogenesis, T Azad, HJ Janse van Rensburg, ED Lightbody, B Neveu, A Champagne, A Ghaffari, VR Kay, Y Hao, H Shen, B Yeung, BA Croy, KL Guan, F Pouliot, J Zhang, CJB Nicol, X Yang, Nature Communications, 2018.
