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Charles M. Schroeder IIIAssistant Professor of Chemical & Biolmolecular
Engineering and Biophysics Ph.D. 2004, Stanford University Development
of novel tools for single cell and biomolecule analysis, including, bio-inspired
materials, hydrodynamic trapping, gene network dynamics, and synthetic biology | Current research
In my research group,
we develop new techniques in molecular
biophysics to study single biomolecules
and single living cells. We
investigate a wide-range of problems in synthetic
biology,
biomaterials, polymer dynamics and single cell manipulation, and
a
common theme in our research is fluorescence microscopy. In current
work,
we recently developed a novel method to confine particles or
single cells
in free-solution called the "hydrodynamic trap", which is
an ideal
approach to study gene network dynamics in single living
cells. In a second
area of research, we are developing a general
platform for template-directed
synthesis of non-natural polymers to
build bio-inspired materials. Using fluorescence
microscopy, we
directly probe the microstructure of these materials by studying
the
dynamics of single polymer molecules far from equilibrium. In a third
project area, we apply the tools of directed evolution to generate
novel
fluorescent proteins. In a fourth area of research, we use
synthetic biology
to develop and study the dynamics of synthetic
transcription factors, with
applications in DNA mapping and DNA
sequencing.
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