Center for Bioinformatics at KU

As part of our public Seminar Series
http://bioinformatics.ku.edu/seminars

March 3, Tue 2009
1:00 pm, MRB 100 Conference Room

Dr. Robert Dunn

Department of Chemistry, University of Kansas

Probing Biological Function at the Single Molecule Level

Technology has progressed to the point where it is now possible to not only detect the fluorescence from a single molecule, but also carry out spectroscopic measurements at the single molecule level.  This has opened new opportunities for using single molecule measurements as probes of their local environment and structure.  Moreover, the ability to detect single molecule emission allows one to study dynamics that might normally be hidden in bulk measurements on large ensembles of molecules.  In our laboratory, we are developing both far-field and near-field single molecule optical techniques for applications in the biological sciences.  The development of these techniques and their application to the study of nuclear pore complexes in the nuclear envelope will be discussed.