Lectures and seminars From Molecular Forces to Function: Shining a Light on Mechano-immunology

09-01-2026 10:00 am - 11:00 am Add to iCal
Campus Solna Peter Reichard room, Biomedicum level 3

In this talk, Dr Rong Ma will share her research on using cutting-edge methods to investigate the tiny but significant mechanical forces that shape immune cell function—explaining how she develops and uses molecular tools, specifically DNA-based tension probes, to capture receptor forces in live cells and uncover their significance in signalling and immune cell function.

About the speaker

Dr Rong Ma earned her PhD in Chemistry from Emory University in Khalid Salaita’s lab. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow hosted by Dr Markus Covert in the Bioengineering Department at Stanford University. Dr Ma’s research bridges the fields of quantitative biophysics, bioengineering, and immunology, and focuses on decoding the mechanical language of immune cells with molecular tools. She has been recognized as a Lindau Fellow, a Stanford Science Fellow, and has been awarded the Michelson Prize for her research in mechano-immunology. 

Selected publications

  • Antibody Fc receptor CD16a mediates natural killer cell activation via mechanotransduction of piconewton forces. In revision. Rong Ma*, K. Christopher Garcia, Bianxiao Cui, Markus W. Covert. *corresponding author
  • Mechano-ID: proximity labeling of mechanically active receptors reveals the mechanome and tags mechanically active cells. Accepted by J. Am. Chem. Soc. Rong Maǂ, Mohamed Husaini Bin Abdul Rahmanǂ, Christian M. Beusch, Brendan R. Deal, David E. Gordon, Khalid Salaita.   (ǂco-first authors)
  • Molecular mechanocytometry using tension-activated cell tagging. Nat. Methods, 2023, 20(11), 1666Ð1671. Rong Ma, Sk Aysha Rashid, Arventh Velusamy, Brendan R. Deal, Wenchun Chen, Brian Petrich, Renhao Li & Khalid Salaita.
  • DNA Probes that Store Mechanical Information Reveal Transient Piconewton Forces Applied by T Cells. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 2019, 116(34), 16949. Rong Ma, Anna Kellner, Victor Pui-Yan Ma, Hanquan Su, Brendan R Deal, Joshua M Brockman, Khalid Salaita.
  • Heteromultivalency enables enhanced detection of nucleic acid mutations.Nat. Chemistry, 2024, 16 (2), 229-238. Brendan R Deal, Rong Ma, Steven Narum, Hiroaki Ogasawara, Yuxin Duan, James T Kindt, Khalid Salaita.

Host: 

Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics (contact: tamsinlindstrom@ki.se)