Fluorescence imaging and electron microscopy are ideal tools for nanoscale molecular imaging.
The advantages of fluorescence microscopy in terms of its multiplexing capability and ability to acquire live movies of biological samples drive biological discovery. The effort to surpass the diffraction limit of light and perform super-resolved fluorescence microscopy (green arrow in the figure above) has also been extremely successful.
Electron microscopy is an ideal imaging technique to study biological cells because of its intrinsic nanoscale spatial resolution. However, typically electron microscopy only provides static black-and-white images.
In an effort to enable multicolor and time-resolved electron microscopy (magenta arrow in the figure above), our laboratory will develop dedicated molecular probes and instrumentation for new correlative light and electron microscopy modalities, and build next-generation biophysical tools for time-resolved cryo-vitrification and high-resolution imaging of biological molecules and cells.
We will use these methods to elucidate the nanoscale protein and membrane dynamics of G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) and neural signaling.