Lab visit to the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne

Krzysztof Bielec, a member of the Soft Condensed Matter Group participated in a research visit at the group of Professor Pablo Rivera-Fuentes. His group focuses on designing, preparing, and using chemical probes to understand physiological and pathological processes in living cells. Those interactions are observed by exploiting varieties of super-resolution fluorescence-based techniques (i.e. TIRF, STORM, spinning disk confocal microscopy). The main principle of single-molecule localization microscopy methods is to reconstruct images by plotting the centers of fluorescent point sources from a series of frames in which only a few molecules are fluorescing at a time. For this purpose, photoactivated and self-blinking dyes were used. Their main feature is the time between bright and dark states (On/Off state).

The aim of Krzysztof's initial project was to analyze previously synthesized compounds and characterize their On/Off equilibrium state in in-vitro experiments. The data collected from measurements on various synthesized compounds would determine the interaction with the finest substituents. After the selection of synthesized targeted dyes, he had to apply them to image microtubules in living cells with a super-resolution TIRF camera.

The visit to EPFL provided an invaluable contribution to extending Krzysztof’s competence and skill set. During the visit, Krzysztof Bielec attended two seminars with invited guests. He worked with super-resolution techniques in both in-vitro and in-vivo experiments to characterize the physicochemical properties of isolated molecules.

Visitor

Krzysztof Bielec

Dates

27 Feb.-23 Mar. 2020

Location

EPFL – Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland