Recently, Professor Jian Ye from our school was selected as one of 2020 Emerging Investigators of Journal of Materials Chemistry B under ROYAL SOCIETY OF CHEMISTRY.  Each contributor was recommended as carrying out work with the potential to influence future directions in materials chemistry.

Professor Jian Ye was recommended by experts in this field to write a research paper titled "Gap enhanced resonance Raman tags for live cell imaging". It was published in the special issue of 2020 JMCB Emerging Investigators, which included the high-quality frontier findings of young scientists in material chemistry.

Professor Ye’s team designed ultrabright gap-enhanced resonance Raman tags (GERRTs), consisting of a petal-like gold core and a silver shell with the near-infrared resonant reporter of IR-780 embedded in between, for long-term and high-speed live-cell imaging. GERRTs exhibited an ultrahigh Raman intensity down to a single-nanoparticle level in aqueous solution and the solid state upon 785 nm excitation, allowing for high-resolution time-lapse live-cell Raman imaging with an exposure time of 1 ms per pixel and a laser power of 50 mW. Under these measurement conditions, they can possibly capture dynamic cellular processes with a high temporal resolution, and track living cells for long periods of time owing to the reduced photodamage to cells. These nanotags open new opportunities for ultrasensitive, low-phototoxic, and long-term live-cell imaging.

Full text links:

1 https://pubs.rsc.org/en/journals/articlecollectionlanding?sercode=tb&themeid=1178dce1-c998-48be-abe8-5bef7c19dc06

2 https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2020/tb/d0tb00659a