Bio-X SIGF Graduate Student Fellow

Awarded in 2017
Home Department: Chemistry
Faculty Advisors: W.E. Moerner (Chemistry) and Jan Liphardt (Bioengineering)

Research Title: Development and Application of a Light Sheet Microscope for 3D Single-Particle Tracking of Chromatin Loci in Thick, Live Mammalian Cells

Research Description: Single-particle tracking (SPT) allows for the full distribution of spatiotemporal behaviors of particles to be observed, revealing dynamics Photo of graduate student Petar Petrov in the lab, operating a laser system.and heterogeneity obscured by ensemble measurements. However, significant fluorescent background has limited SPT studies in the mammalian cell nucleus. Integrating single-particle tracking and optical design with cell biology and fluorescent nanobody array labeling, Petar will develop a novel microscopy platform to perform high-precision 3D SPT in thick, live mammalian cells to quantitatively characterize the motion of chromatin sites such as telomeres, whose malfunction is associated with a change in their dynamics and has been implicated in carcinogenesis and cellular aging.

WHERE IS HE NOW?

Petar is a postdoctoral scholar in the physics department at the University of California, Berkeley.