Research Areas

Single-Molecule and Single-Cell Manipulation Experiments Our research focuses on understanding the interactions of biological molecules and complexes. We use atomic force microscopy to study the forces between and within single biological molecules and single cells. The development of single-molecule techniques to studying molecular properties at the molecular and single cell level has expanded our understanding on the details of how biology and medicine function at the microscopic level. We are studying the cell-cell interactions related to cancer invation and metastasis, protein-nucleic interactions, virus assemblies, and protein-cell interactions as well as developing new nanomanipulation techniques to study the properties of single-molecules.