Dr. Li’s research focuses on bioanalytical chemistry. Her group research is concerned with the development and applications of state-of-art analytical techniques to important biological systems and processes. The ultimate goal of the research is to understand both qualitatively and quantitatively chemical composition, structure and interactions in biological systems down to the single-cell and single-molecule level. Research at this scale has great potential for breakthroughs in both fundamental science and technology. Two types of analytical methods are mostly commonly used and constantly under development: optical spectroscopy and electrochemistry.
Neuron transmission process is vital for many diseases and has been the focus of many research groups. In Dr. Li’s group, surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is used to probe this process. One of the goals is to clarify the mechanism by detecting, identifying and following the release processes of different species including both neuron transmitters and co-transmitters simultaneously upon stimuli. By monitoring the concentration growth rates, the kinetic information during both phasic and tonic neuron firing of different moieties and the relationship between these processes can be obtained. With high spatial resolution, SERS opens up an exciting opportunity to explore the chemicals and activities within a single cell as well as the interactions between cells.
With its good specificity to certain drugs, an ultramicro electrode (UME) will be used in the second project to study the cell activity and its drug response. Scanning electrochemical microscopy (SECM) is adopted to detect and image the activity of a cell and its response to external stimuli, such as drug addition. It provides information concerning the mass transport processes across the plasma membrane and interactions between drug and cell components during the cytotoxicity processes. This is of great importance to the understanding of the inhibition mechanism and the structure functionality relationship of the drug.