| Affiliations: | Aggie Research Mentoring Program |
| Project Leader: | Christopher Marble cmarble112@tamu.edu Physics & Astronomy |
| Faculty Mentor: | Vladislav Yakovlev, Ph.D. |
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Meeting Times:
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TBD |
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Team Size:
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8 |
| Open Spots: | 5 |
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Special Opportunities:
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Potential opportunities include: hands on research experience, learning how to perform data analysis and literature searches, public presentation of research, and co-authorship of publication. Students that wish to participate in summer 2023 may apply for a paid position through USRG.
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Team Needs:
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Students with a broad scientific background are welcome as research will span from preparing/handling biological samples to optical experiment, to signal processing, and data analysis. No prior experience with optics required. Useful but not necessary pre-requisite skills include: optics and laser alignment, basic programming experience (Python, MATLAB, etc.), interest in electronics, signal processing, statistics, biological sample preparation, etc. |
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Description:
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This research project seeks to apply quantum light and nonlinear optics to probe the mechanical properties of single cells in healthy and diseased tissues. Brillouin scattering is a label-free imaging technique used to assess the viscoelastic properties of materials by detecting inelastic light scattering off of acoustic waves in the material. This technique has been applied by our group to study the “stiffness” of cancer cells. In previous years, our group has used Brillouin scattering to distinguish between cancerous and healthy tissues [1] and between growing and receding tumors [2]. Recently our group has observed that cancer cells on the border of a tumor have a reduced stiffness to cancer cells in the core of the tumor [3]. This reduction of stiffness is believed to be a critical component in cancer cells’ ability to grow, invade healthy tissues, and metastasis to other locations in the body.
The fundamental challenge to applying Brillouin scattering to cell biology is that achieving high precision measurements with fast acquisition speeds generally requires using intense laser light. Using intense laser light in biological samples results in phototoxicity and/or thermal damage during the measurement making the results unreliable [4]. This research project will address this challenge by using quantum entangled “squeezed” light to increase the sensitivity of our measurement compared to classical laser light of similar intensity. We will utilize our newly completed quantum stimulated Brillouin system [5] to demonstrate that squeezed light can help us avoid phototoxicity and improve acquisition speeds without compromising measurement precision. This study will be applied to the progression of illness in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease and to the metastasis of cancer cells as they invade healthy tissues. References: |