Oxygen is vital for life, and clinicians can provide supplemental oxygen to patients through face masks and nasal tubes, but there are no methods available for delivering oxygen directly into cells.
This capability would be useful initially as a research tool but could eventually have important medical applications—for example, to enhance therapies that lose effectiveness when oxygen levels are low.
As reported in PNAS, investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) recently developed a technology that allows them to engineer cells to make oxygen on demand in response to an added chemical.
