George and Pauline Watt Centennial Lectureship - Thomas O'Halloran
Nov
12
2025
Description
The Inorganic/ChemBio Seminar Series presents: Thomas O'Halloran
George and Pauline Watt Centennial Lectureship
Michigan State University
Hosts: Emily Que and Yi Lu
Title: Bioinorganic Chemistry in Health and Disease: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Quantitative Mapping of Metals in Biology
Location: WEL 2.122
Refreshments served at 3:15pm
Biomedical research teams continue to discover new types of bioinorganic chemistry involved in the regulation or disruption of key events in developmental and reproductive biology, cancer cell proliferation, autoimmune disease, neurodegenerative disease and host pathogen interactions. The challenge to the bioinorganic community is to provide highly quantitative approaches to imaging metals in cells and tissue and then establish how localized changes in metal concentration control physiological processes in normal and disease states. To better understand the mechanisms underlying these processes at the cellular and molecular level, and to extend the concept of a ‘quantitative inorganic phenotype’ an NIGMS-supported center for Quantitative Elemental Mapping for the Life Sciences (QE-Map) was established four years ago. This team has been collaborating with groups across to the globe to accelerate the development and application of quantitative element imaging and analysis technologies. The overarching goals of QE-Map team are to a) develop routine methods for the accurate analysis and mapping of inorganic elements from the single cell to the tissue level; b) to overcome current limitations of Laser Ablation ICP-MS and X-ray Fluorescence Microscopy XFM technologies; c) disseminate optimal methods for robust data acquisition, calibration and standardization of quantitative data; and d) to develop workflows and software that allow co-registration of images obtained from allied mapping methods (i.e. immunohistochemistry, MALDI etc.). This talk will highlight examples of zinc, copper, iron, cobalt and molybdenum chemistry in mammalian tissues in autoimmune and infectious disease.