Real-time Nanoscopy

• Fachliche Zuordnung: Zellbiologie
• Förderung: Förderung von 2019 bis 2021
• Projektkennung: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 413957687

The detailed knowledge of cellular and subcellular signal transduction and its malfunction is of utmost importance for our future understanding of the physiological but also the pathophysiological processes in healthy and diseased human tissues and organs such as the heart, the nervous and the immune system. Many of such processes occur in spatial and temporal domains that – as of yet - are concealed by physical and experimental boundaries. The recent advent of light ‘nanoscopy’ enabled researchers to break the optical resolution of conventional light microscopy and reveal subcellular structural details and the detailed relationship between proteins and protein complexes important for signal transduction at unprecedented precision. Nevertheless, the temporal ‘barrier’ of the milliseconds time domain represents an almost similarly large barrier to overcome for a comprehensive appreciation of signal transduction mechanisms. This domain is still hidden for current commercial ‘nanoscopy’ equipment but is important because signal transduction during e.g. excitation-contraction coupling in the heart, neurotransmitter release at neuronal synapses and release of cytotoxic vesicles during the immune response occur in the range of a few (tens of) milliseconds. Here, we propose the purchase of a novel, groundbreaking technology, ‘real-time nanoscopy’, that overcomes both barriers, the spatial and temporal boundaries of commercially available techniques. With an optical resolution of ~120x120x120 nm it allows super resolution imaging beyond the Abbe-boundary at effective acquisition speeds well exceeding 150 frames/seconds, thus pushing the temporal resolution forward by one or two orders of magnitude when compared to currently commercially available super resolution microscopes. This unrivalled combination of optical and temporal resolution enables researchers for the first time to fully analyze and appreciate signal transduction processes in healthy and diseased living cells and tissue and thus might represent a further milestone in optical technologies for studying signal transduction in living specimen.

• DFG-Verfahren: Großgeräteinitiative
• Großgeräte: Inverted Microscope
• Gerätegruppe: 5090 Spezialmikroskope
• Antragstellende Institution: Universität des Saarlandes
• Leiter: Professor Peter Lipp, Ph.D.
• Beteiligte Personen: Professor Dr. Dieter Bruns; Professor Dr. Jens Rettig