Paper 13139-10
Paper 13139-10
Probing bacterial membranes with polarization-resolved second harmonic scattering (Invited Paper)
18 August 2024 • 1:55 PM - 2:20 PM PDT | Conv. Ctr. Room 11B
Abstract
Understanding how small molecules interact with bacterial cells has practical implications for drug and adjuvant design. The surface specificity of nonlinear optical processes such as second harmonic scattering, can be leveraged to study these systems and their correlated questions. We demonstrate an extension of this technique with polarization-resolved information to assess the orientational disorder of small amphiphilic dye molecules in living bacterial membranes.
Presenter
Tessa R. Calhoun
The Univ. of Tennessee Knoxville (United States)
Tessa R. Calhoun received her B. S. in Chemistry from Iowa State University in 2005. She went on to receive her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2010 under the guidance of Graham Fleming where she studied quantum coherence in photosynthetic systems. In lieu of a traditional postdoctoral position, she had the opportunity to start her independent research career as a Lewis-Sigler Fellow in the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University. She joined the faculty in the Chemistry department at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 2013, and expanded into the Department of Biochemistry & Cellular and Molecular Biology in 2023. Her interdisciplinary research interests include using ultrafast spectroscopy and microscopy techniques to study small molecule behavior in heterogeneous biological environments.