Engineering topics

Cang, Hu

Publications and source records attributed to Cang, Hu.

3 records

DOE OSTI2015

Adiabatic far-field sub-diffraction imaging

The limited resolution of a conventional optical imaging system stems from the fact that the fine feature information of an object is carried by evanescent waves, which exponentially decays in space and thus cannot reach the imaging plane. We introduce here an adiabatic lens, which utilizes a geometrically conformal surface to mediate the interference of slowly decompressed electromagnetic waves at far field to form images. The decompression is satisfying an adiabatic condition, and by bridging the gap between far field and near field, it allows far-field optical systems to project an image of the near-field features directly. Using these designs, we demonstrated the magnification can be up to 20 times and it is possible to achieve sub-50 nm imaging resolution in visible. Our approach provides a means to extend the domain of geometrical optics to a deep sub-wavelength scale.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

DOE OSTI2014

Visualizing the chain-flipping mechanism in fatty-acid biosynthesis

The acyl carrier protein (ACP) from fatty acid synthases sequesters elongating products within its hydrophobic core, but this dynamic mechanism remains poorly understood. In this paper, we exploited solvatochromic pantetheine probes attached to ACP that fluoresce when sequestered. The addition of a catalytic partner lures the cargo out of the ACP and into the active site of the enzyme, thus enhancing fluorescence to reveal the elusive chain-flipping mechanism. This activity was confirmed by the use of a dual solvatochromic cross-linking probe and solution-phase NMR spectroscopy. Finally, the chain-flipping mechanism was visualized by single-molecule fluorescence techniques, thus demonstrating specificity between the Escherichia coli ACP and its ketoacyl synthase catalytic partner KASII.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2013

Light-sheet Bayesian microscopy enables deep-cell super-resolution imaging of heterochromatin in live human embryonic stem cells

Heterochromatin in the nucleus of human embryonic cells plays an important role in the epigenetic regulation of gene expression. The architecture of heterochromatin and its dynamic organization remain elusive because of the lack of fast and high-resolution deep-cell imaging tools. We enable this task by advancing instrumental and algorithmic implementation of the localization-based super-resolution technique. We present light-sheet Bayesian super-resolution microscopy (LSBM). We adapt lightsheet illumination for super-resolution imaging by using a novel prism-coupled condenser design to illuminate a thin slice of the nucleus with high signal-to-noise ratio. Coupled with a Bayesian algorithm that resolves overlapping fluorophores from high-density areas, we show, for the first time, nanoscopic features of the heterochromatin structure in both fixed and live human embryonic stem cells. The enhanced temporal resolution allows capturing the dynamic change of heterochromatin with a lateral resolution of 50–60 nm on a time scale of 2.3 s. Light-sheet Bayesian microscopy opens up broad new possibilities of probing nanometer-scale nuclear structures and real-time sub-cellular processes and other previously difficult-to-access intracellular regions of living cells at the single-molecule, and single cell level.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗