Engineering improved measurement and actuation for nanoscale biophysics
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COMMENTARY
Engineering improved measurement and actuation for nanoscale biophysics Allison H. Squires 1 Received: 15 August 2020 / Accepted: 28 August 2020 # International Union for Pure and Applied Biophysics (IUPAB) and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract This commentary profiles the research interests of my recently established research group at The University of Chicago, as well as my own research trajectory and contributions to the field of nanoscale biophysics. I describe here certain open challenges of interest that drive my group’s current research efforts, along with my past efforts that have impacted these areas. Keywords Single molecule . Nanoscale biophysics . Nanopore . ABEL trap . Phycobilisome . Fluorescence spectroscopy
Introduction I opened my lab at The University of Chicago in the Department of Molecular Engineering late last year (2019). My research group is broadly interested in pushing the limits of extracting information from nanoscale biological systems and in devising new ways to actuate components of these systems. These efforts will advance our collective capability to understand and experiment on biology from the bottom up.
Research interests Nanoscale biophysics is maturing as a field. Our growing bottomup understanding of cell biology has been driven by many advanced instruments for nanoscale observation, such as imaging (Betzig et al. 2006; Kim et al. 2007) and structural biology technologies (Drenth 2007; Bai et al. 2015), among many others. These observations have made it clear that the key features of life universally arise from sub-cellular spatial and temporal heterogeneities. Yet non-perturbative acquisition of information about nanoscale structure and events remains challenging; every technique in our single-molecule toolkit strikes a unique balance among trade-offs of spatial and temporal resolution, molecular specificity, the richness or complexity of information acquired, and limitations of the experimental conditions under which that * Allison H. Squires [email protected] 1
Pritzker School for Molecular Engineering, The University of Chicago, 5640 South Ellis Ave, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
data may be collected. There is unquestionably a need for continued investigation and innovation to optimize our access to information about nanoscale biological processes. Actuation is the complementary capability to measurement; experimentation relies on repeated prediction, perturbation, and observation. But, nanoscale-targeted and on-demand manipulation of living systems remains challenging. Existing approaches to actuate or perturb the nanoscale biology of a cell are primarily macroscopic or bulk biochemical and physical techniques, such as genetic and chemical manipulation, or changing environmental conditions. Biochemically targeted (but spatiotemporally random) dilute nanoscale perturbations are possible (Mannix et al. 2008); or alternatively, micron-scale targeting is possible through specialized techniques such as electrophysiology and nano
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