Abstract:

This seminar will cover two research topics in our group. The first one is nanometer scale sensing with living biological cells. In the biomedical sciences and technologies, the greatest advances in the last decade have been inspired by the genome project. What comes after the deciphering of the genetic code? Certainly one next step is the biochemistry driven by the gene, from the cellular nucleus to its organelles, cytoplasm and beyond. One important goal is to follow in real time the biochemical kinetics and dynamics of the living cell, much of which is in terms of small ions and biomolecules. Using both optical microscopy/spectroscopy and scanning probe microscopy, we have imaged single living cells and probed single molecule interactions.