Ilaria Testa
Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry
RESOLFT Super Resolution Microscopy: Application for Life Sciences
Thursday 04 June 2015
Location: Small Lecture Theatre, Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, Sherrington Building
Abstract: The recent breaking of the diffraction resolution barrier by sequentially switching the fluorescence of adjacent features on and off made nanoscale imaging routine. Nanoscopy variants switch fluorescence either in a targeted manner with intense laser beams or on a molecule-by-molecule basis in a stochastic fashion. RESOLFT fluorescence nanoscopy enables fast and continuous imaging of living cells and tissues containing rapidly photoswitcheable fluorescent proteins (rsFP) at ultralow light levels. Distributions of rsFP-fusion proteins in living bacteria and mammalian cells are imaged at < 40 nm resolution; spontaneous and stimulated changes of dendritic actin filaments and spine morphologies can be recorded over seconds to hours. Lifetime based experiments enable precise localization of pre- and postsynaptic proteins.
Biography: Ilaria Testa received her PhD in 2009 from the University of Genoa and was a postdoc at the Department of NanoBiophotonics at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen. In 2015, she became Assistant Professor at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, where her group intends to develop the novel paradigms made available by super-resolution microscopy to address contemporary challenges in biophysics and molecular biology.