Seminar by Prof YANG 'Supressing photothermal convection in plasmonic optical tweezers and optogenetic bioreactors'

Speaker: Prof Ya Tang Yang - Jack; National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan

Seminar title: Supressing photothermal convection in plasmonic optical tweezers and optogenetic bioreactors

Abstract:
In this talk, I will cover two separate subjects. First, I will go over our past work in trapping in nano plasmonic optical lattice. In particular, photothermal convection has been adversely disrupt the particle trapping in plasmonic optical tweezers and strategies to overcome such bottleneck will be discussed. Among them, we demonstrate strategies to suppress the plasmonic photothermal convection by either using near zero thermal expansion coefficient of water at low temperature or silicon carbide substrate. Second, I will cover recent development of optogenetic bioreactors. Such devices provide real time, in vivo characterization of optogenetic bacterial circuits. The optical density, fluorescence detection for green fluorescence protein reporter as well as the input stimuli is provided by light emitting diode(LED) at multiplexed wavelength. The light sensing E. Coli harbors a synthetic two component system(TCS) circuit from CcaS- CcaR system used in the chromatic adaption of cyanobacteria Synechocystis PCC 6803. Such a tool will be vital for bacterial optogenetic circuit characterization to study growth related phenomena.