Using Bespoke Fluorescence Microscopy to Study the Soft Matter of Living Cells at the Single Molecule Level

When?

Friday 25 November 2011, 14:00 to 15:00

Where?

30 BB 03 Physics Seminar Room

Open to:

Staff, Students

Speaker:

Dr Mark Leake, Department of Physics, Oxford University

The use of bespoke imaging tools and analysis can offer significant insight into the
living counterpart of soft condensed matter. The soft matter of biological systems consists of molecular building blocks, a staple of which is protein. Protein molecules, so small that 1 billion would fit on the full-stop at the end of this sentence, carry out most of the vital activities in living cells. Many of these processes require the assembly of multiple proteins into remarkable biological machines. Obtaining the blueprints for the architecture of these machines is essential for understanding the workings of the cell. Here, I will discuss recent biological physics experiments on functional single-celled organisms in which one can apply bespoke fluorescence microscopy imaging and analysis to monitor the number and dynamics of several
different proteins at the nanometre length scale to a precision of single molecules.