UMD News Releases

Duluth, MN — Ahmed A. Heikal, of the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD), and Vladimir V. Ghukasyan of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill have co-edited a book entitled, "Natural Biomarkers for Cellular Metabolism: Biology, Techniques, and Applications," which was published by Taylor & Francis, CRC Press (October 2014), in their series on Cellular and Clinical Imaging (Senior Editor: Ammasi Periasamy). Heikal and his students have also contributed a chapter in this book.

The book’s first section introduces the fundamentals of cellular energy metabolic pathways as well as natural biomarkers within the context of their biological functions. The second section outlines the theoretical and technical background of quantitative, noninvasive, autofluorescence microscopy and spectroscopy methods, and the last two sections explore applications in biochemistry, cell biology, and medicine.

Heikal has been published over 30 peer-reviewed publications and has been an invited speaker at a number of universities and scientific conferences on various interdisciplinary topics at the interface of chemistry, biology, engineering, and biophysics. He is currently the principal investigator of his interdisciplinary research group at UMD.