Targeted Dye Labeling as a Tool for Imaging Material and Biomaterial Microenvironments

The use of targeted-dye-labeling to probe environs within larger microenvironments is a powerful tool to elucidate the structure and function of specific components in materials. Combining site-specific dye-labeling with optical microscopy characterization methods can allow the tracking dynamics of protein function, the sorting of lipid mixtures as a biological mimic, and the intra-cellular monitoring of cellular proteins through the use of fluorescent proteins. The chapters included in this dissertation will focus on the use of optical microscopy as a tool to image particular fluorescently labeled targets within a surrounding microenvironment. The optical imaging of synthetic and naturally occurring vesicles is shown to be a powerful tool to follow site-specific chemical reactions in polymer microcapsules and the delivery of quantum dots to intra-cellular environments via liposomes, as well as, the sorting of lipids into distinct domains (Chapter 2). The implementation of a dye-labeling strategy to optically identify specific environs can be extended to energetic materials in an effort to follow the quality of recrystallization of RDX (Chapter 3). The strategy of dye-labeling can be extended to specifically labeling individual DNA sequences conjugated to magnetic beads to monitor and validate Hall-based DNA sequence detection using both two and three-strand DNA assembly onto condensed matter surfaces (Chapter 4). Finally, the use of strategically placed fluorescent dye molecules appended to matrix metalloproteinase inhibitor (MMPI) molecules will be explored to monitor the interaction of MMPIs in the presence of LNCaP-MT1-GFP cells (Chapter 5). The experiments described within these listed chapters illustrate the validity of utilizing targeted dye-labeling and subsequent tracking via optical microscopy methods as a tool to investigate a host of interdisciplinary research aims in an effort to push the boundaries of the frontiers of science.