22.02.2010

Perspectives of Superresolution in Neurobiology

Fully understanding the functionality and the complexity of the human central nervous system remains as one of the major open questions in modern science. The Drosophila neuromuscular junction (NMJ) is a widely used and acknowledged model for the analysis of synapse structure and assembly. When considering the size of a Drosophila NMJ synapse of about 500 nm in diameter it appears logical that in order to visualize its spatial architecture the resolution of image acquisition methods needs to be accordingly high. more15.02.2010

Stem Cell Biology

The view of a tumor as an aberrant tissue whose growth and differentiation is sustained by cancer stem cells is now largely accepted for a wide variety of cancer diseases. Cancer stem cells, as their physiological counterparts, possess the ability to control their fate by maintaining themselves in a quiescent and undifferentiated state or self-renewing to geometrically expand their number. The first situation leads to an asymmetric division which gives origin to two well different daughter cells. more25.01.2010

Quantum Dots DNA Nanosensors

Semiconductor quantum dots are light-emitting nanocrystals (2-10 nm) that straddle the border between condensed matter and atomic physics. In a quantum dot, all three spatial dimensions of the crystal are limited to less than the exciton radius of the material such that discrete energy levels arise due to quantum confinement effects and the spacing of which can be controlled by manipulation of crystal size. more04.01.2010

Embryonic Stem Cells Morphology

Morphological characterisation of embryonic stem cells is important in many ways. In culture, the morphology indicates the status of the cells, e.g., undifferentiated or differentiated, and also provides clues about the general health and condition of the cells, e.g, apoptotic, necrotic or mycoplasma contaminated. While there are a vast range of studies characterising stem cell markers by light microscopy, there is limited information about the fine structure of hES cells and colonies by electron microscopy. more14.12.2009

FRET and Translocation in Cell-based Imaging

Microscopy in combination with fluorescence labeling techniques has enabled us to look at diverse biological processes. By tagging a protein of interest, we learn about its intracellular localization and dynamics. Fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) sensors, which carry two fluorescent tags instead of one, a donor and an acceptor, are generated to obtain information about protein function. While the use of multiple labels is straightforward and common in high content imaging and screening, the use of multiple FRET sensors is more difficult. more30.11.2009

Making Light Sound

Optical interrogation of biological tissues offers great variety of intrinsic probing mechanisms as well as highly specific contrast approaches based on tissue-specific expression of fluorescent proteins and extrinsically administered molecular biomarkers. Yet, most of the important living organisms and tissues remain inaccessible by the current optical imaging techniques due to complications arising from intense light scattering in tissues. more16.11.2009

Open your Eyes: Mites Spin a Line

Tetranychus urticae is a phytophagous mite living in group. Every individual produces silk strands and constructs a common web for the colony. In spite of the silk value for T. urticae survival, silk remains poorly studied. We developed a technique to dye the silk on both inert and living substrates. Fluorescent brightener 28 was used to visualize the silk. This technique will help to carry out future studies about the web architecture of T. urticae and other silk-spinning arthropods. Introduction more04.11.2009

Developing MALDI Imaging Technology for Cancer Profile

Normal and diseased tissues are complex mixtures of different cell populations. A better understanding of protein expression changes that occur during 
diseases needs sensitive and specific technologies for each of these cell types. Mass spectrometry based tissue imaging (MALDI-MSI) is a newly developed technique, allowing the visualization of proteins, peptides, lipids and small molecules directly on thin sections cut from fresh frozen or fixed paraffin embedded tissues. more