Research

To accomplish our goal of understanding the world around us one molecule at a time, the Biteen Lab pursues three closely integrated research thrusts.
See Some Recorded Research Presentations from the Lab Below

(1) Answering fundamental questions about microbial cell biology with single-molecule and super-resolution imaging inside living cells.

Recent Representative Publications

  • Z. Chen, M. Seman, Y. Fyodorova, A. Farhat, A. Ames, A. Levashkevich, S. Biswas, F. Huang, L. Freddolino, J.S. Biteen, K. Ragunathan, “Tracking live-cell single-molecule dynamics enables measurements of heterochromatin-associated protein-protein interactions,” Nucleic Acids Research (2024). DOI
  • V. Nandana, et al., “The BR-body proteome contains a complex network of protein-protein and protein-RNA interactions,” Cell Reports 42,113229 (2023). DOI
  • N.L. Fernandez, Z. Chen, D.E.H. Fuller, L.A. van Gijtenbeek, T.M. Nye, J.S. Biteen, and L.A. Simmons, “DNA methylation and RNA-DNA hybrids regulate the single-molecule localization of a DNA methyltransferase on the bacterial nucleoid,” mBio, 14, e03185-22 (2023). DOI

(2) Pioneering new methods to extend the scope of single-molecule imaging in microbiology and nanotechnology.

Recent Representative Publications

  • Y Hoang, C.A. Azaldegui, R.E. Dow, M. Ghalmi, J.S. Biteen, A.G. Vecchiarelli, “An experimental framework to assess biomolecular condensates in bacteria,” Nature Communications 15, 3222 (2024). DOI
  • J.-Y. Kim, C. McGlothin, M. Cha, Z.J. Pfaffenberger, E.S.T. Emre, W. Choi, S. Kim, J.S. Biteen, N.A. Kotov, “Direct Printing of Helical Metal Arrays by Circularly Polarized Light,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 121, e2312082121 (2024). DOI
  • A.L. Calkins, L.M. Demey, B.M. Rosenthal, V.J. DiRita, and J.S. Biteen, “Achieving Single-Molecule Tracking of Subcellular Regulation in Bacteria During Real-Time Environmental Perturbations,” Analytical Chemistry 95, 774–78 (2023). DOI
  • Z. Chen, L. Geffroy, and J.S. Biteen, “NOBIAS: Analyzing anomalous diffusion in single-molecule tracks with nonparametric Bayesian inference,” Frontiers in Bioinformatics 1:742073 (2021). DOI; Accompanying code on Github.

(3) Understanding the light-matter interactions that govern plasmon-coupled fluorescence with single-molecule and single-particle spectroscopy of dye/nanoparticle systems.

Recent Representative Publications

  • S. Chattopadhyay and J.S. Biteen, “Achiral plasmonic antennas enhance differential absorption to increase preferential detection of chiral single molecules,” ACS Measurement Science Au (2024). DOI
  • S. Chattopadhyay, M. Lipok, Z.J. Pfaffenberger, J. Olesiak-Bańska, J.S. Biteen, “Single-particle photoluminescence measures a heterogeneous distribution of differential circular absorbance of gold nanoparticle aggregates near constricted thioflavin T molecules,” Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters 15, 1618–1622 (2024). DOI
  • Z.J. Pfaffenberger, S. Chattopadhyay, and J.S. Biteen, “Far-field polarization optics control the nanometer-scale pattern of high fluorescence dissymmetry emission from achiral molecules near plasmonic nanodimers,” Journal of Physical Chemistry C 127, 9663–9672 (2023). DOI

Some recent research talks from our lab:

August 2021, Prof. Biteen’s overview of the lab’s research at Ph.D. student orientation

January 2021, Presenting a virtual Biological Physics/Physical Biology seminar

March 2019, Julie at the National Academies Workshop on Single-Cell and Single-Molecule Analysis Tools

August 2020, Ziyuan’s talk on “Single-Molecule Tracking Reveals Multi-State Dynamics in Vivo”

August 2020, Zechariah’s talk on “Super-Resolving Plasmon-Enhanced Emission and Polarization”