Christine Payne Assistant Professor Office: MSE G026 Phone: 404-385-3125 Fax: 404-385-6057 E-mail Christine Payne Research Group Page

B.S., University of Chicago, 1998; Ph.D., Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, 2003; NIH Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University, 2003-2006

DARPA Young Faculty Award, 2011; NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, 2009; ACS PROGRESS/Dreyfus Lectureship, 2008; NIH Research Scholar Development Award, 2007; NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2004-2006

Research Interests

Living cells carry out countless chemical reactions regulated by a variety of environmental parameters such as local concentration, diffusion, redox state, pH, and active transport. The goal of research in the Payne Lab is to understand the mechanism of intracellular reactions in relation to the cellular environment. Recent developments in a broad range of scientific disciplines including spectroscopy, cell biology, materials science, structural biology, and microscopy have created a unique opportunity to probe these questions directly. Students in the Payne Lab draw upon these scientific disciplines for a highly interdisciplinary research experience.

Imaging chemical reactions within a cell. Cells control certain chemical reactions through the localization of substrates and enzymes within distinct vesicles that are actively transported through the cell. We are especially interested in the reactions that result from the interaction of substrate-containing vesicles with enzyme-containing vesicles. We are using two-color single particle tracking to understand how extracellular cargo such as LDL and albumin are degraded within the cell. Cells use the degraded cargo as building blocks to generate new cellular components. By understanding the underlying dynamics of this process, we hope to inform the treatment of diseases that occur when cells fail to degrade this cargo.

Interactions of nanoparticles with cells. Nanoparticles have important biomedical applications ranging from the treatment of human disease with gene therapy to understanding basic cellular functions with fluorescent probes. In all of these applications, nanoparticles come into contact with a complex mixture of extracellular proteins. The Payne Lab is interested in understanding how the adsorption of proteins onto the surface of a nanoparticle alters the interaction of the nanoparticle with a cell. By understanding how nanoparticles interact with cells in a realistic environment, it is expected that we will be able to design better nanoparticles for the treatment and detection of human disease.

Fluorescence microscopy in challenging environments. While recent developments in fluorescence microscopy make it possible to image many of the dynamic events that are essential to cellular function, new methods are necessary to observe the dynamics of single molecules inside living cells. Imaging within live cells is difficult as the emission from fluorescent probes competes with the autofluorescence of the cell. The Payne Lab is developing new optical techniques for quantitative cellular imaging. Optical methods of interest include nanometer-level imaging, spectroscopic single-particle tracking, and multiphoton total internal reflection microscopy.  

Recent Publications

"Conditioned media downregulates nuclear expression of Nrf2," S. Sarkar, C.K. Payne, and M.L. Kemp, Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering, in press, (2013).

"Nanoparticle surface charge mediates the cellular receptors used by protein-nanoparticle complexes," C.C. Fleischer and C.K. Payne, J. Phys. Chem. B, 116, 8901-8907 (2012).

"Imaging lysosomal enzyme activity in live cells using self-quenched substrates," W.H. Humphries and C.K. Payne, Analytical Biochemistry, 424, 178-183 (2012).

"Fluorescent coumarin thiols measure biological redox couples," K.G. Reddie, W.H. Humphries, C.P. Bain, C.K. Payne, M.L. Kemp, and N. Murthy, Organic Letters, 14, 680-683 (2012).

"Nanoparticles act as protein carriers during cellular internalization," Gerard W. Doorley and C.K. Payne, Chem. Commun., 48, 2961-2963 (2012).

"Endo-Lysosomal Vesicles Positive for Rab7 and LAMP1 Are Terminal Vesicles for the Transport of Dextran," W.H. Humphries, C.J. Szymanski, and C.K. Payne, PLoS ONE, 6, e26626 (2011).

"Single particle tracking as a method to resolve differences in highly colocalized proteins," C.J. Szymanski, W.H. Humphries, and C.K. Payne, Analyst, 136, 3527-3533 (2011).

"Cellular binding of nanoparticles in the presence of serum proteins," G.W. Doorley and C.K. Payne, Chem. Commun., 47, 466-468 (2011).

"Intracellular degradation of low-density lipoprotein probed with two-color fluorescence microscopy," W.H. Humphries IV, N.C. Fay, and C.K. Payne, Integrative Biology, 2, 536-544 (2010).

"Pyrenebutyrate leads to cellular binding, not intracellular delivery, of polyarginine quantum dots," A.E. Jablonski, T. Kawakami, A.Y. Ting, C.K. Payne, J. Phys. Chem. Lett., 1, 1312-1315 (2010).

"Imaging gene delivery with fluorescence microscopy," C.K. Payne, Nanomedicine, 2, 847-860 (2007).

"Cellular binding, motion, and internalization of synthetic gene delivery polymers," G.T. Hess, W.H. Humphries IV, N.C. Fay, and C.K. Payne, Biochim. Biophys. Acta, Mol. Cell Res., 1773, 1583-1588 (2007).

"Internalization and trafficking of cell surface proteoglycans and proteoglycan-binding ligands," C.K. Payne, S.A. Jones, C. Chen, and X. Zhuang, Traffic, 8, 389-401 (2007).

"Nanophotonic light sources for fluorescence spectroscopy and cellular imaging," O. Hayden and C.K. Payne, Ang. Chem. Int. Ed., 44, 1395-1398 (2005).