Professor Alan Waggoner, Director, Molecular Biosensor and Imaging Center, Carnegie Mellon University
will deliver the autumn Leica seminar on Wednesday 14th November at 5pm
Lecture Theatre 3, Life Sciences Building, with a post lecture reception at 6.15pm in the foyer outside the lecture theatre.
The lecture is free, but if you wish to attend can you let Kate Goodheart (kategf@liverpool.ac.uk) know for catering purposes.
Background information
Dr. Waggoner’s research group creates fluorescence-based detection systems for biology and biotechnology. The cyanine dye fluorescent labelling reagents developed in the laboratory have become widely used in industry and academic research for multicolour analysis of proteins, nucleic acids, cells and tissues by imaging and flow cytometry. The laboratory has participated in a wide range of research projects. As part of a NASA funded project his group produced a panel of fluorescent reagents and an imaging system, which detected sparse microbial life in the extreme environment of the Atacama desert. They are also developing new fluorescent reagents to monitor cellular electrical potential and ion fluxes to study the cardiac function of living mammalian hearts.
Dr. Waggoner is currently leading the Molecular Biosensor and Imaging Center into creating a novel sensor unit technology for a broad class of biosensors. He envisions this technology will provide a very powerful, and almost generic, tool for detecting protein interactions on and inside living cells. The sensor units are generated by combining engineered, cell-expressed target-binding proteins and environmentally sensitive fluorescent dyes that report target binding. Multiple sensors can be expressed simultaneously to sensitively and rapidly detect several targets within individual cells.
These sensor units are being incorporated into intracellular sensors, sensor particles and optical fibre sensors for interstitial spaces in tissues, sensors on chips for in vitro assays, and sensors for high throughput automated homogeneous assays in pharmaceutical drug discovery.
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