New Windows Into the Secret Lives of Cells

Dr. Eric Betzig 
Professor of Molecular and Cell biology and Eugene D. Commins Presidential Chair in Experimental Physics, Senior Fellow at the Janelia Research Campus, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of California, Berkeley
Co-recipient of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

From the 17^th through the 19^th century, beautifully artistic drawings of living specimens were inextricably linked to biological discovery.  However, for much of the 20^th century, optical microscopy took a back seat to the powerful new fields of genetics and biochemistry. Starting in the 1980s, the tables started to turn again, thanks to the widespread availability of computers, lasers, sensitive detectors, and fluorescence labeling techniques.  The result has been an explosion of new technologies with the ability to understand the findings of genetics and biochemistry in the context of spatially complex and dynamic living systems at high spatiotemporal resolution. I will discuss the role of my lab in this developing story, and show how an increasingly detailed look at life has increasingly revealed an intricate and beautiful world.

Hosted by the Department of Chemistry