Ananthanarayanan was awarded the Royal Microscopical Society Life Sciences Award in 2025 for the use of novel microscopies in cell biology. Her group images individual motor proteins — dynein, kinesin — and the mitochondria they transport, in living cells, at single-molecule sensitivity, combining light-sheet and TIRF-class imaging with particle tracking to ask how organelle positioning and mitochondrial dynamics are controlled. The methodological emphasis is on getting single-molecule sensitivity inside a live cell rather than in vitro, which is the hard version of the problem. Positioned against the established body of NV-ensemble quantum sensing work — DEER, nanoscale NMR and T1 relaxometry protocols operating at pT/sqrt(Hz) field sensitivity — this is the closest thing at UNSW to a biological end-user for an in-cell quantum sensor: the mitochondrial systems she studies are precisely where NV nanodiamond thermometry and free-radical relaxometry at pT/sqrt(Hz) have been aimed, and she has the live-cell imaging infrastructure to validate any such measurement independently.
Studies co-translational protein folding using time-resolved single-molecule fluorescence spectroscopy synergistically combined with NMR and single-particle cryo-EM.
Gambin was the first EMBL Australia group leader appointed to Single Molecule Science. His signature method combines cell-free protein expression with two-colour single-molecule coincidence and fluctuation spectroscopy, which sidesteps purification entirely: proteins are expressed, labelled and measured in lysate, an order of magnitude faster than conventional interaction assays. The biology is protein self-association and aggregation — alpha-synuclein in Parkinson's, cardiac and muscular disease proteins — where the size distribution of oligomers, not the mean, is the quantity of interest. Positioned against the established body of NV-ensemble quantum sensing work — DEER, nanoscale NMR and T1 relaxometry protocols operating at pT/sqrt(Hz) field sensitivity — the conceptual overlap with quantum biosensing is the insistence on distributions over averages, and his aggregation systems (paramagnetic-species-generating, redox-active amyloid) are a plausible target for T1-relaxometry-based NV detection at pT/sqrt(Hz) in the near term.
Uses single-molecule fluorescence microscopy in live bacteria to study stochastic gene expression, chromosome organization, and cell-to-cell variability.
Studies the physical rules governing bacterial gene expression using single-molecule and quantitative live-cell imaging approaches.
Sierecki co-developed the cell-free single-molecule interaction platform with Gambin and runs a group applying it to protein interaction networks: mapping which proteins bind which, with what affinity and in what stoichiometry, at throughput high enough to screen rather than characterise one pair at a time. Recent applications include viral protein-host interactions and transcription factor complexes. Positioned against the established body of NV-ensemble quantum sensing work — DEER, nanoscale NMR and T1 relaxometry protocols operating at pT/sqrt(Hz) field sensitivity — the relevance to a quantum-sensing candidate is as a source of well-characterised, quantitatively-defined biological targets: a pT/sqrt(Hz)-class sensor is only useful in biology if someone can tell you exactly what molecular species is present and at what concentration, which is what this platform delivers. Borderline inclusion — no quantum or physics-instrumentation component — kept because single-molecule technique development is the core of the group.