DIDACTIC Lecture Abstract:

"Single molecule fluorescence and super-resolution imaging"

In this didactic lecture I will provide the fundamentals of single molecule fluorescence detection and imaging. I will revise the basis of fluorescence with its main properties including spectral, polarization and lifetime and how these properties can be exploited to report on biophysical parameters in cell biology. In the second part of my lecture I will explain the main principles of different super-resolution techniques based on fluorescence detection. I will discuss different technical implementations, examining pro´s and con´s of these techniques. Finally, I will show several biological examples to illustrate the unique capabilities offered by these techniques, but also their current limitations.

SCIENTFIC Lecture Abstract:

"Resolving individual multi-molecular interactions in living cells"

Organisation by compartmentalisation is a general property of natural systems that efficiently facilitates and orchestrates biological events in space and time. The advent of super-resolution microscopy and single molecule dynamic approaches have revealed that compartmentalisation starts at the nanometre scale with molecules organising and interacting transiently with each other following modularity principles. In this talk, I will describe the combination of multicolour single particle tracking (SPT) at different labelling densities to resolve in real time multi-molecular interactions in living cells. Low density SPT conditions allows to reconstruct the mobility of individual molecules and transient molecular interactions, while high density conditions provide unique information on the spatial and temporal length scales of cellular regions re-visited (or forbidden) for molecules. We find that molecular diffusion, transient multi-molecular interactions and dynamic re-modelling of the environment play key roles regulating biological function.

Bio:

Maria Garcia-Parajo is an ICREA Research Professor at ICFO-Institute of Photonic Sciences, leading the Single Molecule Biophotonics group. Her research focuses on the development of advanced optical techniques to the study of biological processes at the single molecular level in living cells. She obtained her PhD in Physical Electronics in 1993 at Imperial Colleague, UK.  Previous experience includes research at L2M-CNRS Paris (France) and University of Twente (The Netherlands). To date she has published more than 200 publications and delivered more than 250 talks at international conferences and workshops upon invitation. She has coordinated several international research projects, and is member of various international scientific advisory, executive and editorial boards. She has received several prestigious awards, including the Young Academy Research fellow award from the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (1998), National Prize in Biophysics (2017), Advanced ERC grant (2017) and Emmy Noether Laurate from the European Physical Society (2020). Maria is actively involved in (inter)national actions to promote gender equity in Science.