Lixue SHI

To find out exactly how cells work, it is necessary to further understand proteomics and metabolomics. However, compared to the better-established transcriptomic techniques, proteome-level and metabolome-level tissue phenotypic patterning are underdeveloped to a great extent, especially in the spatial context. To address this challenge, Dr. Shi developed new biotechnology-based on advanced vibrational microscopy to produce proteome and metabolome readouts, thus adding new dimensions to interpret biocomplexity.

Dr. Shi graduated from Peking University and finished her Ph.D. at Columbia University. During her doctoral program, she worked with Prof. Wei Min on vibrational microscopy for ultra-multiplexing, vibrational sensing, and high-throughput metabolic imaging. Since 2020, she is doing postdoctoral research in Prof. Min’s lab.

Dr. Shi is devoted to enhancing the sensitivity of Raman spectroscopy (a molecular spectroscopic method that detects vibrations of chemical bonds), especially for the stimulated Raman excitation fluorescence (SREF), and she accomplished the first far-field single-molecule Raman imaging. Her recent achievements include the development of (1) a breakthrough volumetric rendering platform with scalable multiplexity, for systematic imaging of specific protein markers in thick intact tissues. (2) a high-throughput metabolic imaging framework for single-cell metabolic profiles and tissue/organ-level large-area metabolism. Her works pave the way for unraveling biological metabolism and proteome interaction network under physiology and pathology.