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Valerică Raicu

Professor
Physics
 KEN 3063
BiophysicsFaculty

Website: https://sites.uwm.edu/raicu-research-group/

Research

Professor Raicu’s main research interests are:

  • Spectral fluorescence imaging, Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET), and nonlinear optical microscopy for studying protein-protein interactions and protein complex structure and dynamics in vivo
  • Studies of the physical properties of heterogeneous systems, including biological cells and tissues, biomembranes, electrode/electrolyte interfaces, polymers, and colloidal systems
  • Dielectric and mechanical relaxation in biological and nonbiological systems
  • Nonlinear laser spectroscopy for probing reaction dynamics and mechanical and thermal relaxation in proteins

Biographical Sketch

Valerică Raicu obtained his Physics Diploma in 1991 and his PhD in Biophysics in 1998, both from the University of Bucharest (Romania). During that time, he worked as a Research Scientist for the Institute of Physical Chemistry of Romanian Academy (1992-1996) and for Research & Design Institute for Rare and Radioactive Metals (1996-1998). The following three years he was a Research Instructor at the Department of Physiology at Kochi Medical School (Japan). In 2002, Raicu obtained a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Departments of Chemistry and Physics and Charles H. Best Institute, University of Toronto.

Since 2004, Raicu has been at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he holds the rank of Professor in the Department of Physics and Adjunct Professor at the Department of Biological Sciences. He served as the Chair of the Department of Physics from 2012 to 2015. Professor Raicu has developed a Biophysics course for which he also wrote the book Integrated Molecular and Cellular Biophysics (Springer, 2008). His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation (Programs: Physics of Living Systems, Major Research Instrumentation, and Partnerships for Innovation), Bradley Foundation, UWM Research Foundation, Aurora Spectral Technologies, LLC, and UWM Research Growth Initiative. He is also a Senior Researcher with the RIIO Alliance.

Selected Publications

Raicu, Valerica, and Raicu, Valerica. “Real time monitoring of the evolution of an epidemic regarded as a physical relaxation process.” Physics Letters A 388. (2021): 127074.
Biener, Gabriel, Stoneman, Michael R., and Raicu, Valerica. “Fluorescence intensity fluctuation analysis of receptor oligomerization in membrane domains.” Biophysical Journal 120. (2021): 3028.
Paprocki, Joel, Biener, Gabriel, Stoneman, Michael, and Raicu, Valerica. “In-Cell Detection of Conformational Substates of a G Protein-Coupled Receptor Quaternary Structure: Modulation of Substate Probability by Cognate Ligand Binding.” The Journal of Physical Chemistry 124.45 (2020): 10062–10076.
Stoneman, M R., Biener, G, Ward, R J., Pediani, J D., Badu, D, Eis, A, Popa, Ionel, Milligan, G, and Raicu, Valerica. “A general method to quantify ligand-driven oligomerization from fluorescence-based images.” Nature methods 16.6 (2019): 493-496.
Badu, Dammar N., Yokoi, Koki, and Raicu, Valerica. “Relaxation in systems with hierarchical organization: Analytical derivation of the relaxation and dispersion functions.” Physics Letters A 383.11 (2019): 1063-1070.
Corby, M J., Raicu, Valerica, and Frick, David N. “New Techniques to Study Intracellular Receptors in Living Cells: Insights Into RIG-I-Like Receptor Signaling.” Advances in experimental medicine and biology 1111. (2019): 219-240.
Corby, M J., Stoneman, M R., Biener, G, Paprocki, J D., Kolli, R, Raicu, Valerica, and Frick, David N. “Quantitative microspectroscopic imaging reveals viral and cellular RNA helicase interactions in live cells.” The Journal of biological chemistry 292.27 (2017): 11165-11177.
Li, Z, Wang, Y, Huang, J, Ahsan, N, Biener, G, Paprocki, J, Thelen, J J., Raicu, Valerica, and Zhao, Dazhong. “Two SERK Receptor-Like Kinases Interact with EMS1 to Control Anther Cell Fate Determination.” Plant physiology 173.1 (2017): 326-337.
Mishra, A K., Gragg, M, Stoneman, M R., Biener, G, Oliver, Julie A., Miszta, P, Filipek, S, Raicu, Valerica, and Park, P S. “Quaternary structures of opsin in live cells revealed by FRET spectrometry.” The Biochemical journal 473.21 (2016): 3819-3836.
Raicu, Valerica, and Feldman, Yuri. Dielectric Relaxation in Biological Systems: Physical Principles, Methods, and Applications. Ed. Raicu, Valerica. Oxford University Press, 2015.
Biener, Gabriel, Stoneman, Michael R., Acbas, Gheorghe, Holz, Jessica D., Komarova, Luidmila, Orlova, Marianna, Kuchin, Sergei, and Raicu, Valerica. “Development and experimental testing of an optical micro-spectroscopic technique incorporating true line-scan excitation.” International Journal of Molecular Sciences, MDPI AG 15.1 (2014): 261-76.
Singh, Deo R., and Raicu, Valerica. “FRET spectrometry: a new tool for the determination of protein quaternary structure in living cells.” Biophysical Journal, Reed Elsevier 105.9 (2013): 1937-45.
Mannan, M. Amin-ul, Shadrick, William R., Biener, Gabriel, Anshu, Ashish, Raicu, Valerica, Frick, David N., and Dey, Madhusudan. “An Ire1-Phk1 Chimera Reveals a Dispensable Role of Autokinase Activity in Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress Response.” J. Mol. Biol. 425. (2013): 2083-99.
Patowary, Suparna, Alvarez-Curto, Elisa, Xu, Tian-Rui, Holz, Jessica D., Oliver, Julie A., Milligan, Graeme, and Raicu, Valerica. “The Muscarinic M3 Acetylcholine receptor exists as two differently sized complexes at the plasma membrane.” Biochemical Journal 452. (2013): 303-312.
Singh, Deo R., Mohammad, Mohammad M., Patowary, Suparna, Stoneman, Michael, Oliver, Julie A., Movileanu, Liviu, and Raicu, Valerica. “Determination of the quaternary structure of a bacterial ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporter in living cells.” Integrative Biology, The Royal Society of Chemistry 5.2 (2013): 312-323.