Research

Our focus is on the development and application of nonlinear optical methods for studying dynamic biophysical and material systems in real time.
Recent work has centered on methods of resolution enhancment in ultrafast mid-IR microscopy, the structure and dynamics of peptide-ion interacitons,
and peptide folding in liquid-liquid phase separated droplets.

Funding

National Science Foundation (NSF) Award CHE-2108727 "Super Resolution Two-Dimensional Infrared Imaging”

National Science Foundation (NSF) Award CHE-2239472 "CAREER: Nonlinear Infrared Studies of Biomolecular Coacervation”

Publications

6. Edun D.N., Cracchiolo O.M., Serrano A.L. A Theoretical Analysis of Coherent Cross-Peaks in Polarization Selective 2DIR for Detection of Cross-α Fibrils under final review

5. Cracchiolo O.M., Edun D.N., Betti V.M., Goldberg J.M., Serrano A.L. Cross-α/β Polymorphism of PSMα3 Fibrils Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences Accepted

4. Drexler C.I., Cracchiolo O.M., Myers R.L., Okur, H.I., Serrano A.L., Corcelli S.A., Cremer P.S. Local Electric Fields in Aqueous Electrolytes Journal of Physical Chemistry B 2021, 125, 30, 8484-8493 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcb.1c03257

3. Edun D.N., Flanagan M.R., Serrano A.L. Does Liquid-Liquid Phase Separation Drive Peptide Folding? Chemical Science 2021, DOI: 10.1039/D0SC04993J

2. Cracchiolo O.M., Geremia D.K., Corcelli S.A., Serrano A.L. Hydrogen Bond Exchange and Ca2+ Binding of Aqueous N-Methylacetamide Revealed by 2DIR Spectroscopy. Journal of Physical Chemistry B 2020, 124, 32, 6947-6954

1. Edun D.N., Nelmark C.E., Serrano A.L. Resolution Enhancement in Wide-Field IR Imaging and Time-Domain Spectroscopy Using Dielectric Microspheres. Journal of Physical Chemistry A 2020, 124, 27, 5534-5541

(prior to ND)

Serrano AL, Lomont JP, Tu L-H, Raleigh D P., Zanni M T. A Free Energy Barrier Caused by the Refolding of an Oligomeric Intermediate Controls the Lag Time of Amyloid Formation by hIAPP. Journal of the American Chemical Society. 2017 139, 16748

Kratochvil H.T.; Carr J.K.; Matulef K.; Annen A.W.; Li H., Maj M.; Ostmeyer J.; Serrano A.L.; Raghuraman H.; Moran S.D.; Skinner J.L.; Perozo E.; Roux B.; Valiyaveetil F.I.; Zanni M.T. Instantaneous ion configurations in the K+ ion channel selectivity filter revealed by 2D IR spectroscopy. Science vol 353 p1040

Ostrander J.S.; Serrano A.L.; Ghosh A; Zanni M.T. Spatially Resolved Two-Dimensional Infrared Spectroscopy via Wide-Field Microscopy. ACS Photonics 2016 3, 1315-1326.

Serrano A.L.†; Ghosh A.†; Oudenhoven T.A.; Ostrander J.S.; Eklund E.C.; Blair A.F.; Zanni M.T. Experimental implementations of 2D IR spectroscopy through a horizontal pulse shaper design and a focal plane array detector. Optics Letters 2016 41, 524-527.

Serrano A.L.†; Ghosh A.†; Ostrander J.S.; Zanni M.T. Wide-Field FT-IR Microscopy using Mid-IR pulse-shaping. Optics Express 2015 23, 17815-17827.

Ghosh A.; Ho J.J.; Serrano A.L.; Skoff D.R.; Zhang T.O.; Zanni M.T. Two-dimensional sum-frequency generation (2D SFG) spectroscopy: summary of principles and its application to amyloid fiber monolayers. Faraday Discuss 2015 117, 493-505.

Tu L.H.; Serrano A.L.; Zanni M.T.; Raleigh D.P. Mutational Analysis of Preamyloid Intermediates: The Role of His-Tyr Interactions in Islet Amyloid Formation. Biophysical Journal 2014 7, 1520.

Laaser J.E.; Skoff D.R.; Ho J.J.; Joo Y.; Serrano A.L.; Steinkruger J.; Gopalan P.; Gellman S.H.; Zanni M.T. Two-dimensional sum-frequency generation (2D SFG) reveals structure and dynamics of a surface-bound peptide. Journal of the American Chemical Society 2014 136, 956.

Serrano, A.L.; Bilsel O.; Gai, F. Native State Conformational Heterogeneity of HP35 Revealed by Time-Resolved FRET. Journal of Physical Chemistry B 2012 116, 10631-10638.

Serrano, A.L.; Waegele, M.M.; Gai, F. Spectroscopic Studies of Protein Folding: Linear and Nonlinear Methods.* Protein Science 2012 21, 157-170.

Serrano, A.L.†;Culik, R.M.†; Bunagan, M.R.; Gai, F. Achieving Secondary Structural Resolution in Kinetic Measurements of Protein Folding: A Case Study of the Folding Mechanism of Trp-Cage. Angewandte Chemie-International Edition 2011 50, 10884-10887.

Serrano, A.L.; Tucker, M.J.; Gai, F. Direct Assessment of the Alpha-Helix Nucleation Time. Journal of Physical Chemistry B 2011, 115, 7472-7478.

Urbanek, D.C.; Vorobyev, D.Y.; Serrano, A.L.; Gai, F.; Hochstrasser, R. M. The Two-Dimensional Vibrational Echo of a Nitrile Probe of the Villin HP35 Protein. Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters 2010 1, 3311-3315.

Serrano, A.L.; Troxler, T.; Tucker, M.J.; Gai, F. Photophysics of a Fluorescent Non-Natural Amino Acid: P-Cyanophenylalanine. Chemical Physics Letters 2010 487, 303-306.

Ma, Y.; Chiu, P.L.; Serrano, A.L.; Ali, S.R.; Chen, A.M.; He, H. The Electronic Role of DNA-Functionalized Carbon Nanotubes: Efficacy for in Situ Polymerization of Conducting Polymer Nanocomposites. Journal of the American Chemical Society 2008 130, 7921-7928.

(†=equal contributions)