Label-Free Optical Imaging of Chromophores and Genome Analysis At the Single Cell Level
Contributors: Xie, Xiaoliang S.; Zhuang, Xiaowei; Cohen, Adam E.
Published: 2012
Language: eng
Description: Since the emergence of biology as a quantitative science in the past century, a lot of biological discoveries have been driven by milestone technical advances such as X-ray crystallography, fluorescence microscopy and high-throughput sequencing. Fluorescence microscopy is widely used to explore the nanoscale cellular world because of its superb sensitivity and spatial resolution. However, many species (e.g. lipids, small proteins) are non-fluorescent and are difficult to label without disturbing their native functions. In the first part of the dissertation, we explore using three different contrast mechanisms for label-free imaging of these species - absorption and stimulated emission (Chapter 2), heat generation and diffusion (Chapter 3) and nonlinear scattering (Chapter 4). We demonstrate label-free imaging of blood vessels, cytochromes, drugs for photodynamic therapy, and muscle and brain tissues with three dimensional optical sectioning capability.
Notes: Keywords: DNA amplification, imaging, label-free, single cell analysis, single cell sequencing, whole genome amplification.

Thesis Ph.D. Harvard University 2012