摘要

Cellular adaptation to the extracellular environment depends on the coordinated integration of physical forces, chemical signaling, and biological regulation. Fundamental processes such as adhesion, metabolism, and proliferation are governed by mechanotransduction, where biomechanical cues are transduced into biochemical responses. Yet, the temporal hierarchy of these processes remains unresolved: within seconds to minutes, how do cells adjust their membrane tension, ion fluxes, and cytoskeletal architecture? Over minutes to hours, how do metabolic and organelle networks reorganize? Across hours to days, how are chromatin landscapes and epigenomic programs established to sustain adaptive phenotypes?

Current biophysical tools cannot fully capture these integrated dynamics. Super-resolution imaging offers exceptional spatial detail but lacks temporal precision for fast signaling events, while real-time methods sacrifice resolution or chemical specificity. This technical bottleneck has limited our ability to resolve how physical, chemical, and biological processes converge within living cells.

To address this, we propose a multimodal imaging platform that simultaneously monitors membrane mechanics, calcium channel activity, receptor activation, cytoskeletal remodeling, thermal transitions, and chromatin regulation across multiple timescales. By directly visualizing cell–ECM interactions from seconds to days, this approach seeks to uncover the spatiotemporal principles that govern mechanotransduction, signal integration, and adaptive cellular behavior.

个人简介

Dr QIAN (Peter) SU is an Emerging Leader Fellow of the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney. He received PhD in Biophysics from Peking University, China with a joint training at Harvard University. His research program named “Quantitative Imaging at Nanoscale with SUper-resolution (QIAN SU)” bridges applied biomedical engineering with fundamental sciences and medical requests, which brings new insights to mechanistic questions addressed at the single-molecule level by advanced microscopy.