College of Arts and Sciences

Twenty Years Later: Why No Clinical Quantum Dot Imaging Labels?

Quantum dots (QDs), semiconductor nanoparticles that fluoresce upon light excitation, were first
introduced for biological imaging in 1998. At the time, QDs were heralded as a revolutionary
product that would transform biological imaging. QDs have narrow emission bandwidths and
broad excitation spectra, enabling multiplexed imaging. Their fluorescence is tunable based on
QD size, permitting precise tuning of emission wavelength, and QDs are more resistant to
photobleaching than their molecular dye counterpoints. Yet, despite 20 years of research, there
are no clinically approved QD products and QDs remain a niche item used in specific research
situations.

Continue reading… Jessica Winter (Ohio State University)

Emergence and control in microbial communities:  steering bacterial pathogens through the phenotype space of multidrug resistance
 

Antibiotic resistance is a growing public health threat.  The emergence of resistance far outpaces the development of new drugs, underscoring the need for new strategies aimed at slowing the resistance threat.  In this talk, I’ll discuss our group’s ongoing work to understand the evolution of drug resistance in E. faecalis, an opportunistic bacterial pathogen, using quantitative experiments and theoretical tools from statistical physics and dynamical systems. By combining laboratory evolution with simple mathematical models, we show that unconventional strategies–including aperiodic drug dosing,

Continue reading… Kevin Wood (University of Michigan)