Sang-Hyuk Lee

Assistant Professor
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Institute for Quantitative Biomedicine
Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ

Light, Camera, Action! Shining light on biomolecular dynamics and interactions with optical microscopy

Since Robert Hooke first observed cork cell walls with his microscope and called them "Cells" in 1655, the optical microscope has led to numerous discoveries in biology. Moreover, recent groundbreaking advances in optical microscopy have even allowed to capture the real-time dynamics and interactions of biomolecules at the single-molecule level inside cells beyond the diffraction limit. My group has developed a unique multimodal microscope that integrates total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy and holographic optical tweezers with multiple lasers. This versatile microscope has led to new findings in various cellular, biomolecular processes. In this talk, I will first present about the instrument development and then talk about the new exciting results from single-molecule and live-cell microscopy studies of two biological processes, protein-induced mitochondrial DNA bending/unbending dynamics and plant cell wall synthesis.