Abstract:

Structured illumination microscopy (SIM) is one of the powerful super-resolution techniques in bioscience with the advantages of high spatiotemporal resolution and minimal phototoxic. However, conventional SIM suffers from illumination depth, background noise, and imaging duration that greatly limit its application in the imaging of subcellular dynamics. Focusing on national strategic objectives and public health needs, we created next-generation SIM with software and hardware innovation, which drive progression in many research fields, such as cell biology. Firstly, we upgraded conventional SIM hardware to build grazing incidence SIM technology (GI-SIM), which boosts imaging speed to 684 frames per second and increases imaging depth by 10 times to 1 μm. Secondly, we created deep-learning SIM (DFCAN/DFGAN-SIM, rDL-SIM) by innovating the SIM reconstruction algorithms, which extended the imaging duration by 30 times to 60,000 time points. Thirdly, we employed custom-built SIM for subcellular exploration, and over ten new biological phenomena were discovered and validated, including new behaviors of transport proteins in high-speed swinging cilia (>30Hz), "hitchhiking" behavior of mammalian cells, mitochondrial morphological remodeling. Moreover, I developed the first set of Multi-SIM commercial microscopes that incorporate the aforementioned technologies. Multi-SIM not only fills the gap of high-end Chinese-made commercialized super-resolution microscope, but also has been ordered by over ten domestic and international businesses, including Oxford University, HHMI, Wuhan Blood Center, and Shenzhen Advanced Institute. Pertinent patents have generated ¥ 4.25 million in total revenues from the assignment of patent rights.

Profile：

Di Li is a senior engineer at the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences Chinese Academy of Sciences. He received her PhD from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2016. He focuses on the development and biological applications of novel super-resolution microscopy. He has published five papers in journals, including Cell, Nature Methods, and Nature Biotechnology. One of his works, Grazing Incidence Structured Illumination Microscopy (GI-SIM), was awarded as the top ten scientific advances in China in 2018. Four of his ten approved invention patents, related to Multi-SIM, have generated ¥ 4.25 million in total revenues from the assignment of patent rights He has presided over projects such as the National Youth Talent Support Program, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Chinese Academy of Sciences Technical Support Talents, the Beijing Nova Program, and the Chaoyang Phoenix Project.