Press release: Observing the motion of living cells

Nr. 6/2014 - 15.01.2014

Göttingen scientists develop new optical method with highest spatial resolution

(pug) Scientists from the University of Göttingen have developed a new technique which allows for observing the motion of living cells with a resolution that hadn’t been possible before. The new optical method enables scientists to trace the motion of individual cells with the spatial resolution of a millionth part of a millimeter in real time. Until now, the changes in a living cell’s shape could only be measured with the accuracy of a little better than a thousandth part of a millimeter. The details were published in the journal Nature Photonics.

Cells are the building blocks of all living organisms. Therefore, knowledge of their structure, function and interaction is a central point of modern biological studies. Among other things, scientists investigate how cells move, get into contact with each other and form aggregates. „By studying these processes, we want to follow the changes of the cells‘ shape and motion with the highest achievable spatial resolution,“ explains Prof. Dr. Jörg Enderlein from Göttingen University’s Third Institute of Physics, who developed the new method together with his colleague Dr. Alexey Chizhik and Prof. Dr. Andreas Janshoff from Göttingen University’s Institute of Physical Chemistry.

„Our method not only opens up completely new possibilities for studying the motion of cells, but is also broadly applicable in many other fields of research, where the highest spatial resolution for dynamical processes is desired,“ says Prof. Enderlein. The new technique makes use of a very sensitive dependence between the emitting properties of dye molecules and their separation from a metal surface, which is based on the quantum optical interaction between the molecules and metal.

Original publication: Alexey I. Chizhik et al. Metal-induced energy transfer for live cell nanoscopy. Nature Photonics 2014. Doi: 10.1038/nphoton.2013.345.

Contact:
Prof. Dr. Jörg Enderlein
Georg-August University Göttingen
Faculty of Physics – Third Institute of Physics
Friedrich-Hund-Platz 1, 37077 Göttingen
Phone +49 551 39-13833
Email: joerg.enderlein@physik3.gwdg.de
Web: www.joerg-enderlein.de