Research Highlights
Welcome to the RIT College of Science Research Highlights page. The goal of this page is to highlight some of the college's faculty-student research projects.
Thomas H. Gosnell School of Life Sciences
Amino acid metabolism as a putative target for antibiotic development
Verrucomicrobium spinosum magnified 25,000 times using scanning electron microscopy
André O. Hudson and Michael A. Savka, Thomas H. Gosnell School of Life Sciences
Sean McGroty (Undergraduate Student-Bioinformatics)
Dhivya Pattaniyil (Undergraduate -Biochemistry)
Hudson Lab Webpage
Link to manuscript
In most bacteria, the proteogenic amino acid lysine (lys) is synthesized using the intermediate diaminopimelate (DAP). Lysine and DAP are cross-linking amino acids in the cell wall of Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria respectively. The incorporation of lys and DAP is facilitated by the enzyme MurE (DAP-ligase). Using the bacterium Verrucomicrobium spinosum as a model system, we show that the bacterium utilizes DAP as the intermediate for both cell wall and protein synthesis. As such, the enzymes involved in these pathways are attractive targets for the development and or discovery of novel antibiotics.
Submission Date: June 18, 2013
School of Physics & Astronomy
New proposal for realizing torsional optomechanics
Faculty Advisor: Mishkat Bhattacharya, School of Physics & Astronomy
Student Researcher: Hao Shi, Physics
Description: Optomechanics is a rapidly growing field that deals with the interaction between optics and mechanical motion, and is aimed at realizing next generation sensing technologies. We proposed a new design for a nanomechanical rotation sensor: an optically trapped windmill-shaped dielectric interacting with Laguerre–Gaussian cavity modes containing both angular and radial nodes. As an improvement on existing schemes, our proposal can couple the dielectric to the, in principle, unlimited photon angular momentum, allowing for better rotation sensitivity.
H. Shi and M. Bhattacharya, “Coupling a small torsional oscillator to large optical angular momentum”, Journal of Modern Optics, 60, 5 (2013).
Submission Date: June 10, 2013
Thomas H. Gosnell School of Life Sciences
Observing fluorescent probes in living cells using a low cost UV LED flashlight retrofitted to a common vintage light microscope
Gregory. A. Babbitt 1*, Cheryl. A. Hanzlik 1,2* and Katelyn. N. Busse 3*.
1. T.H. Gosnell School of Life Sciences, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester NY
2. Confocal Microscopy Lab, College of Science, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester NY
3. Biomedical Engineering, Kate Gleason College of Engineering, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester NY
While the application of molecular biological techniques based upon fluorescent probes has rapidly expanded over recent decades, the equipment cost of fluorescent microscopy has largely prevented its adoption in the college and high school classroom. We offer a simple solution to this problem by describing in detail how to build with simple tools, a fluorescent microscope using a common brand of LED flashlight and second-hand components of vintage Nikon microscopes. This extremely low cost solution is qualitatively compared to an expensive modern Leica system.
Submission Date: June 10, 2013
School of Physics and Astronomy
comet Pan-STARRS
Photo Data: 17 March, 8:30pm.
4 second exposure, ISO 800, f/4.5, 100mm lens, Canon 5D II
Photographer: Grover Swartzlander,
Location: Cobb's Hill Park, Rochester, New York.
The comet becomes visible only a short time after sunset. The sky has to get dark enough, plus the comet is low in the sky and can be lost in the glare of light pollution and atmospheric scattering. Look about 30-40 minutes after sunset toward the western horizon just a little north of where the sun had set (see guide). Your eyes may have to dark adapt a little, but you should be able to see it if the sky is clear. Binoculars help. You may only have about 10-15 minutes of viewing before the comet sets too low in the sky.
Submission Date: March 18, 2013
Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science
Innovative optics for the direct imaging of exoplanets
Faculty Advisor:Grover A. Swartzlander, Jr., Center for Imaging Science and Department of Physics
Student Researcher: Garreth J. Ruane, PhD student, Imaging Science
http://www.rit.edu/cos/optics-rit
An earth-like exoplanet is typically one billion times dimmer than its host star and is separated by a very small angle (similar to the width of mosquito at 36,000 ft!). Instruments designed to image such exoplanets require extreme high contrast and resolution capability. The Optical Vortex Coronagraph (OVC) is an elegant solution that blocks starlight without sacrificing light from a nearby exoplanet using a vortex-phase filtering technique. The Optical Vortex Laboratory in the Center for Imaging Science is working to advance vortex-phase filtering concepts. An elliptical design of the OVC was recently published in the journal Applied Optics.
Garreth J. Ruane and Grover A. Swartzlander, "Optical vortex coronagraphy with an elliptical aperture," Appl. Opt. 52, 171-176 (2013)
Link to paper: http://www.opticsinfobase.org/ao/abstract.cfm?URI=ao-52-2-171
Submission Date: Jan 15, 2013
Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science
Simulation of Individual Human Spectral Sensitivities for Improved Colorimetry
Faculty Advisor: Mark Fairchild, Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Education, Professor of Color and Imaging Sciences
Student Researchers: Rodney Heckaman, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Yuta Asano, Color Science Ph.D. Student, Alex Pagliaro, Color Science M.S. Student
Link:http://www.cis.rit.edu/fairchild/
The average spectral sensitivity to light of the human visual system represents fundamental data required for the practice of colorimetry (the measurement of color) in a wide variety of applications. Unfortunately each observer does not perfectly match these mean data and sometimes it is helpful to understand individual variation in color response. Our aim is to better understand individual variations in color vision through Monte Carlo simulation. Observer variability falls into three major categories: (1) the amount of macular pigmentation which is essentially random, (2) the absorption and scattering of the lens which increases with age, and (3) the spectral absorption characteristics of the cone photoreceptors that can be tied to genetic variations. By modeling these three sources of variation using the demographics and genetics of a typical population, individual observers are simulated. The accompanying figure illustrates the color response for 24 distinct stimuli and 1000 different observers. The fact that the clouds overlap shows that one of the color patches for a given observer might look like a completely different patch for another. This work continues with model refinement and experimental verification.
Submission Date: Jan 9, 2013