Colloquium by professor Steven Chu, Stanford University

Title: Nanometer Long-term Tracking of Dynein Cargoes

Cytoplasmic dynein is essential for intracellular transport, but because of its complexity, we still do not fully understand how this 1.5 megadalton protein works. In this talk, I will discuss novel optical probes that enable single-particle tracking (SPT) of individual cargos transported by dynein motors in live neurons over 900 𝜇𝑚.

About the speaker: Steven Chu is the William R. Kenan, Jr., professor of Physics, and professor of Molecular and Cellular Physiology at Stanford University.

He has published in atomic, polymer and biophysics, molecular biology, ultrasound imaging, nano-materials science, batteries and other clean energy technologies. 

Previously he was U.S. Secretary of Energy, where he began ARPA-E, the Energy Innovation Hubs and was personally tasked by President Obama to assist BP in stopping the Deepwater Horizon oil leak.

Previously, he was director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Professor of Physics and of Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Berkeley, Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Stanford University, where he helped launch Bio-X, a multi-disciplinary institute combining the physical and biological sciences with medicine and engineering, and head of the Quantum Electronics Department at Bell Laboratories.

He was past president and chair of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, served on the Senior Advisory Committee to the Directors of the National Institutes of Health and National Nuclear Security Agency.

He was awarded the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics for laser cooling and trapping of atoms, is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and 8 foreign Academies. 

He received an A.B. degree in mathematics and a B.S. degree in physics from the University of Rochester, a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, and 32 honorary degrees.