Exceptional Points Enhanced Acoustic Sensing of Biological Cells

特殊点增强生物细胞的声学传感

• 批准号: 2328407
• 负责人: Xiaoyun Ding
• 金额: $ 56.85万
• 依托单位: University of Colorado at Boulder
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2024-05-01 至 2027-04-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2328407&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Exceptional; Points; Enhanced; Acoustic; Sensing

This award supports research that investigates the fundamentals understanding of a novel biosensing concept for high-sensitivity measurement of cell mechanical biomarkers. Biomarkers, or biological markers, are measurable indicators of a biological cell state or condition and can be closely associated with changes in functionality and health of cells. Thus, the ability to measure multiple cell mechanical properties as biomarkers will benefit biological research and clinical applications such as cancer studies, drug screening/discovery, and immunology. The acoustic sensing concept in this project relies on the detection of exceptional points, which are highly sensitive dynamic states that occur in non-Hermitian physical systems characterized by balanced gain and loss. The long-term research goal of the project is to employ the sensing scheme for measuring mechanical biomarkers of individual cells in high throughput for both fundamental studies and clinical applications. The research findings will also contribute to the PIs’ long-term education and outreach goals of motivating students toward science and engineering, by illustrating far reaching implications of engineering. The project activities will also specifically illustrate how engineers contribute to biomedicine through acoustic sensing and fundamental wave mechanics concepts. Results from this research will benefit the US health and society, impacting the fields of acoustic sensing, disease diagnosis, and cellular biology.The project will investigate fundamental research questions related to how biological cells with different mechanical properties (stiffness, density, compressibility and viscosity) interact with acoustic waves propagating along a substrate, how perturbations caused by the cell and by changes in its properties can break the dynamic equilibrium associated with exceptional points, and how the corresponding frequency splitting mechanism can quantify changes in the cell properties and thus form the basis for a novel acoustic biosensing technique. The project objectives will be accomplished through two research tasks: (1) investigation of cell-wave interaction and fundamental studies on exceptional point generation in acoustic substrates; and (2) experimental investigations, and proof-of-concept of exceptional point-based acoustic biosensing. This project will lead to advances in the understanding of the interaction between surface acoustic waves and a cell. The study of exceptional points generation in surface acoustic waves substrates with a cavity is a novel aspect of the work, which will explore the interaction of multiple wave modes with cavity-cell resonances, their coupling and hybridization. Analytical, numerical, and experimental studies will explore the sensitivity of exceptional points sensing of the cell’s physical properties, which will open new pathways for sensing.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该奖项支持研究对细胞机械生物标志物高灵敏度测量的新型生物传感概念的基本理解。生物标志物或生物标志物是生物细胞状态或状况的可测量指标，并且与功能和状况的变化密切相关。因此，测量多种细胞机械特性作为生物标志物的能力将有利于生物研究和临床应用，例如癌症研究、药物筛选/发现和免疫学。该项目中的声学传感概念依赖于异常的检测。点，这是在以平衡增益和损失为特征的非厄米物理系统中发生的高度敏感的动态状态。该项目的长期研究目标是采用传感方案以高通量测量单个细胞的机械生物标志物。研究结果还将通过阐明工程的深远影响，为 PI 的长期教育和推广目标做出贡献。该项目活动还将具体说明工程师如何为科学和工程做出贡献。通过声学传感的生物医学这项研究的结果将有益于美国的健康和社会，影响声学传感、疾病诊断和细胞生物学领域。该项目将研究与具有不同机械特性（刚度）的生物细胞如何相关的基础研究问题。 、密度、压缩性和粘度）与沿基底传播的声波相互作用，由细胞及其特性变化引起的扰动如何打破与异常点相关的动态平衡，以及相应的分频机制如何量化细胞特性，从而形成该项目的目标将通过两项研究任务来实现：(1) 细胞波相互作用的研究和声学基质中异常点生成的基础研究；(2) 实验研究和验证。 -基于特殊点的声学生物传感的概念将促进对表面声波与细胞之间相互作用的理解。对具有空腔的表面声波基底中的特殊点生成的研究是该项目的一个新颖方面。工作，这将探索多个相互作用具有空腔-细胞共振的波模式、它们的耦合和杂交研究将探索细胞物理特性的异常点传感的敏感性，这将为传感开辟新的途径。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并具有通过使用基金会的智力优点和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。