Decoding dynamic states of living systems.

We build molecular, imaging and computational tools to observe living biology with greater spatial, temporal, molecular and quantitative precision.

Peking University College of Future Technology, Peking University National Biomedical Imaging Center

What we build

Tools for seeing and steering living cells

We design the proteins, build the microscopes and write the algorithms — so that watching a process and controlling it become the same experiment.

A cyan and a yellow fluorescent protein flanking a sensor domain: when the sensor closes, the two fluorophores come together, energy transfers, and the emission spectrum and fluorescence lifetime both shift

See

Biosensors

Engineered proteins that turn a conformational change into a change in fluorescence — read out by FRET, fluorescence lifetime, or single-molecule tracking in living cells.

Membrane-anchored proteins under a beam of blue light: the illuminated ones have recruited a partner protein up from the cytoplasm and docked it at the membrane, while those left in the dark remain unbound

Steer

Optogenetics

Light-controlled switches that recruit a protein to a chosen location, or turn its activity on and off — in seconds, and only where we illuminate.

A microscope light path: laser excitation reflects off a dichroic mirror up through the objective into a dish of living cells; the emission returns to the camera, and the recorded image stack is then segmented, tracked from cell to cell, and reduced to a fluorescence-lifetime decay curve

Observe

Microscopy

Imaging systems built in-house for live, quantitative measurement — single-molecule, light-sheet, fluorescence-lifetime and structured illumination — together with the analysis that turns a recording into numbers.

A sequence fed through a neural network traces a path down an energy landscape, passing through successive folds to a minimum, and yields a designed protein that is then tested inside a cell

Design

AI-based protein design

Generative models that propose new sensors, actuators and binders — which we then build and test directly in living cells, closing the loop between design and measurement.

Latest paper

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From the lab

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Join Liu Lab

We welcome curious scientists and tool builders.

beiliu[AT]pku.edu.cn