Kiryl D. Piatkevich
Protein engineer who designs fluorescent proteins and biosensors for imaging cells and brains, trained with Vladislav Verkhusha and Edward Boyden, now running a lab at Westlake University
Principal investigator, School of Life Sciences, Westlake University, Hangzhou (papers to 2026) · Media Lab, MIT (Edward Boyden lab, papers around 2018) · Department of Anatomy and Structural Biology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine (Vladislav Verkhusha lab, papers 2009–2014)
Most ways of measuring mTOR activity give a snapshot: you break open the cells at one moment and look. In the Atlas study WANG2026C, Piatkevich's lab built a fluorescent protein ticker tape, a set of self-assembling protein fibres that grow inside a cell and lay down fluorescent colour bands over time, like rings in a tree trunk. Each colour can be tied to the activity of a different signalling pathway, including mTOR, NF-kB, STAT3, NFAT and cAMP. Reading the bands later gives a history of each pathway in each single cell, in culture and in living animals.
Using the mTOR version, the team saw mTOR activity rise and fall in step with the cell division cycle. That supports the idea that mTOR signalling is dynamic, not a fixed on or off state, which is one of the Atlas's current themes. The recording was done in cells and animals, not in people.
On PubMed, Piatkevich's first papers (from 2009) come from Vladislav Verkhusha's lab at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, on fluorescent timers that change colour as proteins age and on red fluorescent proteins with unusual colour properties. By 2018 the papers come from Edward Boyden's group at the MIT Media Lab, including Archon1, a fluorescent voltage reporter for imaging electrical activity in neurons, found with a robotic cell-picking screen. Recent papers come from Piatkevich's own group at the School of Life Sciences, Westlake University, in Hangzhou, on far-red fluorescent proteins and super-resolution imaging, and the Atlas paper also lists Zhejiang University.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | M | Fluorescent protein ticker tape (FPTT): Multiplexed recording of transcriptional dynamics in living cells and in vivo WANG2026C Senior author: led the development of the fluorescent protein ticker tape that records the history of mTOR and other pathways in single cells and showed mTOR activity oscillating with the cell cycle. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 2
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Kiryl D. Piatkevich.
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- Jian Jiang Co-developed FPTT, fluorescent 'ticker tapes' that record several signalling pathways in living cells over days, including an mTOR recorder that tracked mTOR activity oscillating through the cell cycle
- Ruizhao Wang Built FPTT, fluorescent 'ticker tapes' that record several signalling pathways in living cells over days, and used its mTOR version to follow mTOR activity oscillating through the cell cycle
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