Temperature sensitive microscopy in life sciences

Everything in nature is in one way or another dependent on temperature. That’s why microscopy experiments need precise temperature control. In this webinar, Dr. Jaroslav Icha from Interherence will take this opportunity to briefly discuss the challenges connected with imaging temperature sensitive processes, sources of sample temperature fluctuations and what can be done to mitigate them.  Our three academic guests will deliver thought-provoking talks about their projects, which benefited from precise and dynamic temperature control with VAHEAT.

Dr. Marlene van Wolferen (University of Freiburg, Germany) will talk about imaging archaeal motility at high temperatures.

Talk title: Twitching motility of thermophillic Archaea mediated by type IV pili

Dr. Marleen van Wolferen did her PhD at the MPI of Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg, Germany. Since 2014, she is a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Sonja Albers. She is an expert in Archaeal cell biology and imaging. Her current research focuses on archaeal surface structures, twitching motility and cell division. See her recent review in Nature Microbiology.

Prof. Sarah Veatch (University of Michigan, USA) will present experiments with liquid-liquid phase separation of proteins and how this process is influenced by biomembranes.

Talk title: Pre-wetting of protein droplets at membranes is enhanced by the membrane phase transition

Prof. Sarah Veatch is an American biophysicist, professor at the University of Michigan. She did her PhD work at University of Washington and postdoctoral research at University of British Columbia and Cornell University and her main research interest lies in physical chemistry of membrane lipids and their influence on plasma membrane organization and function. Her laboratory, established in 2010, focuses on phase transition phenomena in and near membranes, often using conventional and super-resolution florescence localization microscopy on cells and reconstituted systems.

Dr. Serena Teora (Radboud University, Netherlands) will show us her recently published project on temperature-sensitive hydrogel micromotors.

Talk title: Reversible thermo-responsive behaviour of asymmetric micromotors

Serena Teora is originally from Italy, where she studied Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technology at the University of Siena. Afterwards, she worked as independent researcher at the department of Pharmaceutics at Utrecht University, Netherlands. Currently, she is doing her PhD at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, Netherlands in the group of Professor Daniela Wilson. Her main goal is to design smart, stimuli-responsive, self-propelled micromotors. Her achievement in making soft, biocompatible and temperature-sensitive micromotors was recently published in Chemical Communications.