Luke D. Lavis

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Luke D. Lavis is an American chemist working at the Janelia Research Campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is best known for his work on small-molecule dyes that enable biological research.

Early life and education

Lavis was born in 1977, grew up in the state of Oregon, and studied chemistry at Oregon State University.

Ater his undergraduate schooling, he joined the company Molecular Probes,

where he made small-molecule dyes for use in biology.

After working there for four years, he returned to school, obtaining his Ph.D. in organic chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the lab of Ronald T. Raines.

After graduating, he moved in 2008 to the Janelia Research Campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to start his own lab.{{cite web |url=https://www.biointeractive.org/sites/default/files/Annual%20Report/2008/hhmi_ar08.pdf |title=Howard Hughes Medical Institute 2008 Annual Report}}

Research and career

Lavis's lab uses modern chemical syntheses to develop small molecule dyes for biological research. In particular these new dyes offer increased brightness, new spectral regions, and biocompatible features such as cell permeability.{{cite journal |title=Luke D. Lavis

|author=Marx, Vivien

|journal=Nature Methods

|volume=14

|number=10

|pages=931–932

|year=2017

|publisher=Nature Publishing Group

|url=https://www.nature.com/articles/nmeth.4447}}

{{cite web |url=https://www.janelia.org/open-science/janelia-fluor-dyes |title=Janelia Fluor® Dyes}}

In addition to improved performance for conventional uses, these dyes have enabled microscopy advances such PALM and other techniques for super-resolution microscopy.

Many potential users of these newly developed dyes do not have the facilities, or the expertise, to synthesize them themselves, even when the structure known. To help these scientists, Lavis and his lab act as a "dye Santa", who disseminate these dyes for free to colleagues and other labs.

Awards and honors

In 2025, Lavis won the Gregorio Weber Award.{{cite web |url=https://iss.com/news/luke-lavis-weber-award |title=ISS Honors Dr. Luke D. Lavis with Gregorio Weber Award}}
In 2015, Lavis was named as one of the Talented 12 by Chemical & Engineering News.{{cite web |url=https://cen.acs.org/environment/CENs-Talented-12/93/i27 |title=C&EN's Talented 12}}

Selected publications

{{cite journal

|title=Bright ideas for chemical biology

|last1=Lavis |first1=Luke D |last2=Raines |first2=Ronald T

|journal=ACS Chemical Biology

|volume=3

|number=3

|pages=142–155

|year=2008

|publisher=ACS Publications |doi=10.1021/cb700248m |pmid=18355003 |pmc=2802578 }}

{{cite journal |title=A general method to improve fluorophores for live-cell and single-molecule microscopy

|journal=Nature Methods

|volume=12

|number=3

|pages=244–250

|year=2015

|publisher=Nature Publishing Group US New York|doi= 10.1038/nmeth.3256 |pmid= 25599551 |pmc= 4344395 }}

{{cite journal |title=Imaging live-cell dynamics and structure at the single-molecule level

|journal=Molecular Cell

|volume=58

|number=4

|pages=644–659

|year=2015

|url=https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26000849/

|publisher=Elsevier |doi=10.1016/j.molcel.2015.02.033 |pmid=26000849 |doi-access=free}}

{{cite journal |title=A general method to optimize and functionalize red-shifted rhodamine dyes

|last13= Lavis |first13= Luke D.

|journal=Nature Methods

|volume=17

|number=8

|pages=815–821

|year=2020

|publisher=Nature Publishing Group US New York|doi= 10.1038/s41592-020-0909-6 |pmid= 32719532 |pmc= 7396317 }}

References

Category:Living people

Category:1977 births