Abstract: We are in an exciting era of biomedical imaging where the inner-workings of cells and tissues can be explored by rapidly developing imaging methods. Labeling specificity and live cell compatibility make fluorescence microscopy an important tool in biomedical research. Its resolution, however, is limited by diffraction to ~250 nm, preventing us from resolving detailed structures within the cell. The recent advent of single molecule switching nanoscopy methods (SMSN, also known as PALM/STORM), overcomes this fundamental limit by stochastically switching single fluorophores on and off so that their emission events can be localized with high precision resulting in a reconstructed image with down to ~25 nm lateral resolution. However, its application has been largely limited to fixed and flat samples due to the poor temporal resolution, inferior resolution in z, and rapidly deteriorating resolution in thick samples.
In this talk, I will present some of our most recent developments which synergistically combine newly available sensors/devices such as sCMOS cameras and deformable mirrors, analytical methods such as deep learning and novel instrumentation to allow SMSN imaging in live cells and tissue specimens. I will show the capabilities of these new imaging systems in revealing the fine details of subcellular structures from a diverse set of biological systems including viruses, bacteria, yeasts, mammalian cells and brain sections.
Short Bio: Prof. Huang is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Purdue University. His research focuses on developing novel optical imaging technologies to make significant advances in defining the structure and function of cellular constituents in live cells and tissues with molecular resolution. Prof. Huang earned his bachelor’s degree in physics at the University of Science and Technology of China in 2004 and his doctoral degree in Physics from the University of New Mexico in 2011. Before joining Purdue, Fang Huang was a Brown-Coxe Postdoctoral Fellow in Cell Biology at Yale School of Medicine. The Huang lab collaborates extensively with cell biologists, neuroscientists, and chemists to tackle biological questions in areas such as cytokinesis, epigenetics, neural circuits, and cell motility and to reveal disease mechanisms in Alzheimer's disease, autism, and cancer. The lab’s researches are mainly funded through awards from NIH, DARPA and BRAIN Initiative.
