Robert Fitzner: Using Super-Resolution Microscopy to Probe Exchange Pathways (a joint venture of chemistry and mathematics)

On the occasion that his years’s Noble Price in chemistry has been awarded for the super-resolved fluorescence microscopy, the speaker would like present a research project on this topic.

A super-resolution microscope is an optical instrument that allows imaging with resolutions that is smaller than the optical wave-length, which is physically not possible with a classical optical microscope. As the measurements taken by such microscope are of random nature, the interpretation of the data requires knowledge of advanced probability theory.

We used such a microscope to gain a quantitative understanding of molecular exchange of functional molecule along supramolecular fibers, in other words: how do smaller molecule attach to an existing very-long string-like molecule?

In the talk we explain the mode of operation of super-Resolution Microscopes, our experiment design and our result.

Refers to: Probing Exchange Pathways in One-Dimensional Aggregates with Super-Resolution Microscopy; Lorenzo Albertazzi, Daan van der Zwaag, Christianus M. A. Leenders, Robert Fitzner, Remco W. van der Hofstad, and E. W. Meijer; Science 2 May 2014: 344 (6183), 491-495. [DOI:10.1126/science.1250945]