Live Cell Imaging

VaHeat offers precise temperature control for live cell imaging, making it ideal for studying rapid and long-term cellular processes in various systems like human cells, bacteria, yeast, C. elegans, and thermophilic organisms. Its real-time maintenance of cell viability allows researchers to explore key phenomena such as heat shock responses and protein folding.

In Prof. Teije Middelkoop’s lab at BIOCEV, VaHeat captured myosin-GFP distribution changes in C. elegans within 3 seconds of a heat shock (25°C to 30°C). In collaboration with the Optical Imaging Centre Erlangen (OICE), it enabled 18-hour continuous imaging of NDHF cells stained with SIR-tubulin, maintaining cell health.

VaHeat’s precision and flexibility make it a valuable tool for dynamic and long-term cellular imaging across diverse biological systems.

VaHeat ensures consistent thermal conditions essential for DNA nanotechnology, facilitating processes like DNA origami and hybridization. By providing precise control over temperature, VaHeat supports accurate folding of DNA into nanostructures and temperature-sensitive binding reactions. Its capabilities extend to enabling high-precision thermal imaging and exploring a wide range of experimental applications, from single-molecule studies to larger-scale nanostructure analysis.

Studying dynamic cellular processes in thermophilic archaea presents significant challenges due to their need for extreme temperatures. Traditional microscopy at high temperatures has been limited by technical constraints, making it difficult to observe these organisms in real-time.

VaHeat overcomes this barrier and offers precise thermal control, enabling high-resolution imaging of archaea at physiologically relevant temperatures. Researchers can now mimic the extreme conditions in which thermophilic archaea thrive, allowing for in-depth studies of their proteins and metabolic pathways adapted to high heat. VaHeat opens new possibilities for exploring these extremophiles with accuracy and ease.

VaHeat provides precise and dynamic thermal control, making it an essential tool for studying the temperature-dependent behaviors of colloidal and polymer systems. It allows for controlled heating and cooling cycles, which is crucial for investigating phase transitions, polymerization, and other thermo-responsive properties in materials like colloidal suspensions, emulsions, and hydrogels.

For example, PNIPAM nanogels were analyzed for their thermo-responsive behavior using VaHeat. The system enabled rapid temperature shifts, allowing researchers to observe changes in the nanogels in real time under an optical microscope.

VaHeat also facilitated confocal laser scanning microscopy to visualize point defect formation in 3D colloidal crystals by analyzing the Voronoi cell volume of microgels, revealing critical temperature-dependent structural changes.

VaHeat provides precise temperature control, making it an essential tool for investigating temperature-sensitive processes in synthetic biology. Its ability to modulate temperature with high accuracy enables researchers to explore the dynamic behaviors of biomolecular systems under conditions that closely mimic physiological environments.

In the lab of Tom F. A. de Greef (Eindhoven University of Technology) and Yuan-Jyue Chen (University of Washington), VaHeat was used to investigate the temperature-dependent stability and permeability of proteinosomes at 95°C.

Similarly, in the lab of Andreas Walther (University of Mainz), VaHeat facilitated the observation of droplet formation and structural transformations during a heating cycle (25 → 85°C). After 20 seconds at 85°C, droplet populations appeared, followed by growth and coalescence.

VaHeat is essential for nanoparticle synthesis and behavior studies, providing precise temperature regulation critical for examining thermal effects on nanoparticle stability, self-assembly, and interactions.

At the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Vahid Sandoghdar’s lab used VaHeat to investigate the temperature dependence of the diffusion constant of gold nanoparticles, enhancing the capabilities of interferometric scattering microscopy (iSCAT).

Similarly, Guillaume Baffou’s lab at Institut Fresnel employed VaHeat to study thermophoresis, quantifying the temperature dependence of photobleaching rates of nanoparticles.

VaHeat serves as a valuable tool in food science research, enabling precise temperature control to assess the stability of proteins, enzymes, and other biomolecules. This capability is crucial for studies focused on food preservation and processing, where maintaining optimal conditions can significantly impact the quality and safety of food products.

In the lab of Ilja K. Voets at Eindhoven University of Technology, VaHeat was utilized to investigate the influence of exopolysaccharides on the network structure of yogurt at 37°C using confocal laser-scanning microscopy. This research aimed to understand how exopolysaccharides interact with proteins in yogurt, affecting its texture and consistency, and analyze the structural changes and stability of the yogurt matrix.

VaHeat is an essential tool for studying plant responses to temperature changes, including heat stress and growth patterns. It enables researchers to simulate environmental conditions to investigate temperature-sensitive processes such as germination, photosynthesis, and gene expression regulation across different model plants, including Arabidopsis thaliana, Nicotiana tabacum, and Physcomitrella patens.

For example, researchers from the University of Heidelberg, capture time-lapse images of phytochrome-B light receptors in plant nuclei while varying the temperature from 21°C to 30°C, allowing them to observe how nuclear bodies, or photobodies, respond to these temperature changes.