Lindsey Hillesheim

lhilles@physics.umn.edu

Education

B.S., Valparaiso University (1999)
Ph.D., University of Minnesota (2005)

Research

The Mueller lab is primariliy concerned with the refinement and extension of Fluorescence Fluctuation Spectrscopy (FFS). FFS utilizes the flucutations produced by fluorescently-tagged biomolecules to study biological systems both in solution and in cells. My work focuses on the development of dual-color Photon Counting Histogram (PCH) as a fluctuation analysis tool. I am particularly interested in applying dual-color PCH analysis to study protein-protein interactions in living cells and towards that end, I use intrisically fluorescent proteins such as EGFP and mRFP as probes of those interactions. I have refined both single channel and dual-color PCH models to include non-ideal detector effects such as afterpulsing and dead-time. I am currently looking at how Fluorescent Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) affects the resolvability of species in dual-color PCH analysis and how to include such effects in the dual-color PCH.

Web Page

http://www.physics.umn.edu/directory/lhilles.html