Featured Faculty
Professor Mark Reeves
Dr. Reeves: nanodevice, submicron protein microscope
In collaboration with faculty in the chemistry department, we are developing a new kind of microscopy that produces spatial maps of protein distributions across the surfaces of cells. Proteins are sampled from the cell by ablating its surface with infrared light focused through a near-field tip. The proteins are captured into a mass spectrometer and then identified by their mass fingerprint. In this way, images of proteins expressed by lie cells can be produced in approximately one second time frames and with spatial resolutions less than one micron. Such unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution of protein function will bring new understanding to our knowledge of the physics of living systems.