Biophysical Nanotools for Molecular Dynamics at Nanoscale

TOPICAL COLLECTIONS

Guest Editor

Qian Peter Su

University of Technology Sydney, Institute for Biomedical Materials & Devices (IBMD), University of Technology Sydney School of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and IT,

Dr. Qian Peter Su is now an Emerging Leadership 1 Fellow of Australia National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Heart Foundation (NHF, co-fund) at the University of Technology Sydney. He is also a Visiting Scientist in Heart Research Institute at the University of Sydney. His research focuses on establishing an image profiling platform for cardiovascular disease, supported by the Volumetric Imaging Facility, of which he is the facility manager and key operator. In 2017, he received PhD in biophysics supervised by Profs Xiaoliang Sunney Xie and Yujie Sun from the Biodynamic Optical Imaging Centre (BIOPIC) in Peking University, with the honour of Outstanding Graduate Student of the Beijing City. His research bridges applied biomedical engineering with fundamental sciences. It brings new insights to mechanistic questions addressed at the single-molecule level by advanced microscopy and acquired with high spatiotemporal resolution. He has developed state-of-art biophysical nanotools, including single-molecule in vitro reconstitution assays and super-resolution microscopy to visualise precise structures and pinpoint molecular mechanisms during important biological processes, including autophagy, mitochondrial metabolism, DNA replication, and thrombosis.

Collection Overview

Biophysical nanotools, like mechanical nanotechnology and optical nanoscopy, provide us with high spatial and temporal resolutions, as well as high temperature and force sensitivity. Thanks to the development of cutting-edge biophysical nanotools, the insights to biological questions are now shifting from the cellular to molecular level, from qualitative to quantitative characterization, from two-dimensional to multi-dimensional observation, and from micro- to nanometer scale. Notably, fluorescent super-resolution microscopy, cryo-electron microscopy, and optical tweezers have been awarded the Nobel Prizes in 2014, 2017, and 2018, respectively. Biologists are now able to directly observe the trans-scale dynamics and interactions in living specimens, from single molecules, organelles, and cells, to organoids with ultra-sensitivity and low cell toxicity. In this methods collection, we would like to collect biophysical nanotools for molecular dynamics in two major categories:

Mechanical nanotools like dynamic force spectroscopy (DFS), biomembrane force probes (BFP), atomic force microscopy (AFM), optical tweezers (OTs), magnetic tweezers (MTs), etc.
Optical nanoscopy techniques like single-molecule tracking (SMT), super-resolution microscopy, stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (STORM), photoactivated localization microscopy (PALM), structured illumination microscopy (SIM), stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy, etc.

We will also summarize the applications towards systematic analysis and functional characterization. A better understanding of the dynamics and interactions between the intercellular networks and intracellular components is the key to pinpointing many biological processes, including cell adhesion, migration, differentiation, and division.