About Us
Bio-AFM and cellular mechanics (BACM) Lab
In our research group, we develop novel protocols for high-resolution imaging, and nanomechanical property characterization of hard substrates (for example, graphene) as well as soft substrates such as biomolecules, proteins, DNA, RNA, and live plant and animal cells using Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). We study cellular structures and perform high-resolution imaging, force mapping simultaneously using our (Bio-AFM + fluorescence microscope) combined research instrument/ platform. We developed a generalized biophysical method for determining the single molecule interaction forces and binding kinetics for several relevant ligand receptor interactions or protein-protein interactions by isolating their interactions on live cells using AFM. We also work on finding a better drug delivery vehicle by comparing the most probable rupture force and binding probability for targeting overexpressed receptors/tissue. The nature of our research is inherently multi-disciplinary involving physics, chemistry, biology, basic concepts of biomedical engineering. We are also incorporating machine learning approaches to make AFM data analytics faster. Prediction of 3D structures of protein complexes using a hybrid method (combining AFM based 2.5D high-resolution imaging and geometry aware machine learning approaches) is one of our newest directions.
What's New
Graduate students, Nabila Masud, and Hasibul Hasan Hasib presented research posters at NanoVax 2024.
https://chemurgy.vpresearch.iastate.edu/event/2024/nanovax-2024
Congratulations to Graduate student, Nabila Masud on passing the qualifying exam!🎉
Congratulations to Graduate students (Nabila Masud, Hasibul Hasan Hasib) and undergraduate student, Xuan Xuan Lee on the journal publication titled "Correlating macroscopic plant growth parameters to nanomechanical properties of cellulose microfibrils" in Current plant Biology (impact factor: 5.4).🎉
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214662824000276
Congrats to PI Anwesha Sarkar on the 2024 SEED grant proposal "Fusing nanomechanical characterization with multi-omics data to predict plant growth" that got selected for funding!
Congrats to PI Anwesha Sarkar on the 2024 SEED grant proposal "AI-based real-time atomic force microscopy analysis for structural and translational DNA research" that got selected for funding!
Congratulations to Graduate student, Nabila Masud and undergraduate researcher, Carson Stanley on the journal publication titled "Design and Assembly of a Cargo-agnostic Hollow Two-lidded DNA Origami Box for Drug Delivery".
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.27.586853v1
Congrats to PI Anwesha Sarkar on the 2024 SEED grant proposal "Fusing nanomechanical characterization with multi-omics data to predict plant growth" that got selected for funding!
Congrats to PI Anwesha Sarkar on the 2024 SEED grant proposal "AI-based real-time atomic force microscopy analysis for structural and translational DNA research" that got selected for funding!
Graduate student, Jaydeep Ravindra Rade presented flash talk at TrAC day on "3D reconstruction of protein structures from multi-view AFM images using Neural Radiance Fields".
Undergraduate researcher, James Rodgers presented a poster at TrAC day.
https://trac-ai.iastate.edu/
PI, Anwesha Sarkar presented on the effects on Radioimmunotherapy on live glioblastoma cells at Biophysical Society Annual meeting (BPS 2024)
Graduate student, Nabila Masud presented on characterization of mechanically tuned nanocarriers at Biomedical Engineering Society Annual meeting (BMES 2023)
PI, Anwesha Sarkar was invited to present in 'Biomechanics seminar series in UCSD MAE department (November 2023)!
PI, Anwesha Sarkar became Harpole-Pentair Assistant Professor (August 2023)!
Undegraduate researcher, Nathan Faivre became Boeing and Nathan internship Fellowship awardee (mentored by PI A. Sarkar)
Gabby Epperson, a student in WISE 201x (https://www.wise.iastate.edu/) got mentored by PI A. Sarkar and presented a poster (attached image here) @Memorial Union, ISU based on her interview of the PI.
PI Anwesha Sarkar was chosen to participate in 'A Tracing Race project' for exploring the journey of Asian women in STEM at ISU. Please visit the link below for her detailed interview in the link below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0bIq4Ag1R4
IISPIRE-LAMP undergradute researchers: James Rodgers and Joshua Allen (Summer 2023)
I am so happy to share that my graduate student, Nabila Masud presented her first poster at IBE 2023 conference.
https://www.ibe.org/meetings/2023-annual-conference
I was also lucky to present an invited talk at IBE on Saturday, April 15.
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TrAC Seed Grant Proposal “Computational force spectroscopy for prediction of protein-protein interactions” submitted by PI A. Sarkar with co-PIs Ratul Chowdhury and Adarsh Krishnamurthy has been selected for funding. https://trac-ai.iastate.edu/
PI A. Sarkar got invited for a seminar in Physics Department at Creighton University, Nebraska. https://www.creighton.edu/arts-sciences/faculty/physics-ms
Congrats to our graduate Student, Nabila Masud on acceptance of her abstract in IBE conference, April 2023 https://www.ibe.org/meetings/2023-annual-conference
Last week junior in electrical engineering, Carson Stanley, along with assistant professor Dr. Anwesha Sarkar, presented their new conference publication, "Effects of aging on nanomechanical properties of mice bone marrow derived adherent cells using atomic force microscopy (AFM)," at the 2023 Biophysical Society Conference in San Diego. LinkedIn post!
New National Science Foundation (NSF) grant funded to the Bardhan Lab at Nanovaccine Institute and Iowa State University with Saji Uthaman, Donald Sakaguchi, and Anwesha Sarkar to design "unconventional" nanocarriers for #drugdelivery in a #brain model.
We presented the poster explaining our ongoing work: “Virtual AFM: Generating Synthetic 2D Multi-view Images from 3D Protein Structure” at #bmes2022. This is a joint work with Jaydeep Rade, Dr. Soumik Sarkar Dr. Adarsh Krishnamurthy. LinkedIn post!
I am happy to share our recent work on #machinelearning assisted Atomic force microscopy navigation for accelerated imaging, joint work with Jaydeep Rade, Juan Ren, Juntao Zhang, Soumik Sarkar, Adarsh Krishnamurthy. LinkedIn post!
Opportunities
Highly motivated students (possibly with prior experience with any experimental work) are encouraged to email anweshas@iastate.edu to apply for undergraduate research or graduate research.