Nanoaperture Optical Tweezers for Single Biomolecule Studies
Hosted By: Optical Trapping and Manipulation in Molecular and Cellular Biology Technical Group
15 January 2019 14:00 - 15:00
Eastern Time (US & Canada) (UTC - 05:00)The Nobel Prize in Physics this year was awarded to Arthur Ashkin for "optical tweezers and their application to biological systems," and already conventional optical tweezers have taught us a vast amount about biology. Nanoaperture optical tweezers extend the range of these optical tweezers to single digit nanometer sizes. This allows for optical trapping of proteins, DNA fragments and other biomolecules, as well as small viruses.
With this label-free, tetherfree approach proteins have been trapped, sized and their conformational changes observed in real-time. Protein interactions (with DNA and small molecules, including drugs) have been analyzed, and the acoustic modes of proteins in the 10 GHz -200 GHz range have been analyzed. In this webinar hosted by the OSA Optical Trapping and Manipulation in Molecular and Cellular Biology Technical Group, Dr. Reuven Gordon from the University of Victoria will introduce the application of these approaches to biosensing, drug discovery and biophysics.
What You Will Learn:
- The concepts of aperture plasmonic nanoantennas for electromagnetic field enhancement and confinement
- The concept of nanoaperture optical tweezers capable of directly trapping nanometric objects
- The applications of this tool for study of protein interactions with DNA and drugmolecules as well as for biosensing
Who Should Attend:
- Physicists, Biologists, and Engineers interested in optical trapping, biotechnology, nanophotonics, and biosensing research
About the Presenter: Reuven Gordon, University of Victoria
Reuven Gordon received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Cambridge. In 2002, he joined the University of Victoria, where he currently holds a Canada Research Chair in Nanoplasmonics and a Professor position in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. In2009, Dr. Gordon was a visiting Professor at the Institute for Photonic Sciences (ICFO, Barcelona, Spain). He has received a Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance Award (2001), an Accelerate BC Industry Impact Award (2007), an AGAUR Visiting Professor Fellowship (2009), and the Craigdarroch Silver Medal for Research Excellence (2011). He was elected Fellow of the Optical Society of America (OSA) in 2016 and Fellow of the Society for Photographic Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) in 2018. Dr. Gordon has authored and coauthored over 150 journal papers (including 10 invited contributions), two magazine contributions and has co-authored 6 book chapters. He is co-inventor for three patents and four patent applications.