High-Throughput Cell Deformation Cytometry in a Microfluidic Flow
Cellular elastic parameters are sensitive to physiological and pathological events occurring during the life cycle. Studies employing a variety of techniques suggest that healthy, malignant, and metastatic cells can...
“Molecular Movies” from Ultrafast X-ray Experiments
Advances in x-ray science and technology have resulted in breakthrough discoveries ranging from unraveling the structure of DNA and proteins, to visualizing atoms, molecules, and materials at the nanoscale. By virtue of their...
Improving the Photophysics of Red Fluorescent Proteins for Biological Imaging
Although they have become important tools in biological microscopy, fluorescent proteins (FPs) are dimmer and less photostable than small-molecule fluorophores. These limitations thus limit the signal...
Multidimensional Electronic Spectroscopy of Proteins
One of the grand challenges of biophysics is to discover the connection between biological function and molecular motions. This presents a tremendous experimental challenge since biomolecular processes span up to 15 orders of...
Genetically Encoded Biosensors
Genetically encoded biosensors are important tools for real-time measurement of the distribution of metal-ions (e.g. Ca2+, Zn2+) in living cells (Figure 1). Among a handful of design platforms, the fluorescent protein...
Microfluidic cytometer for characterizing photosynthetic efficiency and lipid accumulation in algae
Photosynthetic microalgae are dominant primary food producers in aquatic systems, and algal mass culture has a strong potential to produce oil-based fuel and to remove carbon...
About Ralph Jimenez
My interests are in molecular biophysics and optics for biotechnology. In one project, we employ femtosecond nonlinear electronic spectroscopy to investigate active-site dynamical asymmetry in heme proteins, protein-ligand interactions, and flexibility and conformational diversity in protein folding. Another area of my research involves selection strategies employing a microfluidic cellular spectroscopy and optical force-switching instrument for improving the photophysical properties of fluorescent proteins and sensors used in biological imaging.
The Jimenez group is always looking for highly motivated researchers interested in working at the interfaces of chemical physics, biochemistry, optics and biology. Two Postdoctoral positions are currently open.