You, MingxuAli, Ahsan Ausaf2024-12-042024-12-042024-0910.7275/55129https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14394/55129The cell membrane is a critical structure which serves as a natural barrier between cells and their external environment. It plays a vital role in enabling cells to communicate with each other and transduce signals vital for healthy cellular function. To carry out such functions, the various components of the cell membranes dynamically interact with one another. Most of these interactions are very transient and therefore difficult to study and visualize. In this dissertation, we aim to use DNA as a tool to stabilize and visualize the dynamic and transient interactions which take place on the cell membrane to understand more about them as well as the cell membrane’s structure and biophysical properties. Initially, we introduce the current methods which exist in visualizing transient and dynamic cell membrane interactions, followed by the current advances in DNA based probes which have been used to study the cell membrane biophysics. This will be followed by the development of a ‘DNA Zipper’ probe to visualize and quantify dynamic cell membrane interactions and their role in T-cell signaling. The ‘DNA Zipper’ is further expanded upon and improved into various pairs of probes which are comprehensively used to visualize cell membrane heterogeneity and investigate the presence of both ordered and disordered regions of live cell membranes. Lastly, we expand the ‘DNA Zipper’ based system to membrane proteins by optimizing workflows for the targeted labelling of membrane proteins and use the probes to image ligand induced membrane protein dimerization on live cells with potential applications in drug screening and cell membrane modulation and regulation. Therefore, this dissertation will serve to shed light on the excellent properties of DNA as a tool to visualize and stabilize dynamic interactions on live cell membranes and to regulate these interactions for biological manipulation and function, thereby expanding our understanding of the membrane.Attribution 4.0 InternationalAttribution 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/DNA Nanotechnology, Cell Membrane, Lipid-DNA Conjugate, Dynamic Interactions, Analytical ChemistryDissertation (Open Access)https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2040-8498