Ke Xu
University of California-Berkeley, CA·Biophysics
Many of the cell's most important events happen at scales of nanometers, smaller than ordinary light microscopes can resolve. These include molecules diffusing inside organelles, cargo being packaged for transport, and changes in local acidity.
- Fields
Biophysics
Chemistry
Biology
- Topics
super-resolution microscopy
single-molecule microscopy
single-molecule electrophoresis microscopy
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2028
What they work on
- Determine how protein charge modulates protein interactions and diffusion inside organelle lumens, using multidimensional super-resolution microscopy that maps diffusivity at nanometer resolution.
- Characterize superdiffusion and subdiffusion of molecules in living cells, and map organelle pH dynamics to define their role in protein trafficking.
- Define the structure and physical properties of the ER exit site and how they relate to the formation of transport carriers, using super-resolution microscopy.
- Integrate super-resolution microscopy with FIB-SEM 3D electron imaging to resolve the structure, function and formation of newly discovered ultrathin tubular organelles.
- Develop single-molecule electrophoresis microscopy to quantify protein charge states at super-resolution.
More about the research
This program develops new super-resolution microscopy methods, which beat the normal resolution limit of light, and uses them to make discoveries in cell biology. The lab has already reached resolution below 10 nm. It has also introduced "multidimensional" super-resolution microscopy, which maps local chemical polarity, pH, diffusion and protein activity at nanometer resolution with single-molecule sensitivity. Using these tools, the lab has revealed hidden structures in the cytoskeleton (the cell's internal scaffold), intracellular transport, organelle shape and formation, and membranes.
Why it matters
This work deepens basic understanding of how molecules move, are sorted and are transported inside cells, including how pH and charge shape these processes. The new microscopy tools, such as single-molecule electrophoresis microscopy, could give other cell biologists ways to measure chemical and physical properties of cells at nanometer scale.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
William E Moerner
Stanford University, CA·Biophysics
Develop a 3D super-resolution microscope that images over a large depth range using pupil-plane phase patterns and a tilted light sheet, for single-molecule imaging and tracking in living cells.
Sheng Liu
Clemson University, SC·Biophysics
Build a two-color, high-speed single-particle tracking microscope based on real-time tracking methods like MINFLUX, which can follow two different molecules at once with high spatial and time resolution.
Mikael Backlund
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, IL·Chemistry·Early-career
Establish the fundamental limits on spatial resolution for single molecules that do not photoswitch, using quantum parameter estimation theory, which sets the best precision achievable from the emitted photons.
The school
University of California-Berkeley: 46 labs on PI Pages, $1.1B a year on research, 825 research doctorates a year.
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