New publication in Nature Methods
Our paper entitled “Video rate volumetric Ca2+ imaging across cortical layers using Seeded Iterative Demixing (SID) microscopy” has been published in Nature Methods. (more…)
New publication in Nature Methods
Our paper entitled “Fast volumetric calcium imaging across multiple cortical layers using sculpted light” has been published in Nature Methods. In this work, we present a (more…)
New publication in Cell
Our paper entitled "A force-induced directional switch of a molecular motor enables parallel microtubule bundle formation" by Maxim I. Molodtsov et al. has been published in Cell. Microtubule-organizing centers (MTOCs) nucleate microtubules that can grow autonomously in any direction. To generate bundles of parallel microtubules originating from a single MTOC, the growth of multiple microtubules needs to coordinated, but the underlying mechanism is unknown. Here, we show that a conserved two-component system consisting of the plus-endtracker EB1 and the minus-end-directed molecular motor Kinesin-14 is sufficient to promote parallel microtubule growth. The underlying mechanism relies on the ability of Kinesin-14 to guide growing plus ends along existing microtubules. The generality of this finding is supported by yeast, Drosophila, and human EB1/Kinesin-14 pairs. We demonstrate that plus-end guiding involves a directional switch…
New publication in Nature Communications
Our paper entitled “Direct Detection of a Single Photon by Humans” by Tinsley J. N. et. al., has been published in Nature Communications. In this study we have shown that humans are capable of detecting a single photon onto their eyes with a probability above chance. This was done by developing a quantum light source based on spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) which can generate single-photon states of light and combining it with a state-of-the-art psychophysics procedure. Thereby we could show that the human visual system including the post-processing performed by the retina and the brain can detect a single photon incident onto the eye. Read the publication or a short summary. Please have also a look at the Nature News article by Davide Castelvecchi as well as the articles on…
Congratulations to Qian Lin
We congratulate her on the PhD title awarded by the university of Singapore. Previously, she worked on neurobehavioral manifestations of decision making. Recently, Qian Lin joined our group to strengthen our research focus on whole brain imaging to unravel the collective function of brain structures in simple behavioral paradigms.
We welcome visiting scientists
We welcome Jeroen Delcour (Netherlands) and Ren Zicheng (China) as visiting scientists in our group. They will try to understand specific brain functions by applying our previously developed whole-brain imaging techniques (see our Publications) to animal models.
New publication in J. Phys. Chem. B
Together with our colleagues at the Institute for Biophysical Dynamics at the University of Chicago, we have developed a method using infrared spectroscopy and atomistic modeling that would allow to better understand the mechanism behind the extreme ion selectivity and transport properties in ion channels. Our findings have recently been published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry B. [caption id="attachment_1312" align="aligncenter" width="584"] Location of the potassium channel KcsA in the cell membrane of bacteria. The schematic illustration on the right shows the changes in strength and direction of vibrational coupling inside the filter depending on the ion species, as found by the study. @David S. Goodsell & RCSB Protein Data Bank[/caption] Ion channels are essential structures of life. Ion channels are specialized pores in the cell membrane and move charged…
New Publication in Analytical Chemistry
Together with our collaborator Markus Arndt we published in Analytical Chemistry on how to improve Laser-induced acoustic desorption (LIAD) for natural biochromophores. This methodology might enable us to use fragile biomolecules in Quantum-enhanced metrology experiments. Link to Paper or look up other publications of our group. Ugur Sezer, Lisa Wörner, Johannes Horak, Lukas Felix, Jens Tüxen, Christoph Götz, Alipasha Vaziri, Marcel Mayor, and Markus Arndt Laser-induced acoustic desorption of natural and functionalized biochromophores Anal. Chem., 2015, 87 (11), pp 5614–5619 (Download)
Dipl. Ing. Awarded to Magdalena Helmreich
We congratulate Dip. Ing. Magdalena Helmreich for an excellent defense of her thesis and graduation with distinction!
We welcome our new Postdoc Michael Taylor
Michael got his PhD in Physics from the University of Queensland, Australia, where he worked on new experimental strategies for optical tweezers. Most notably, he combined optical tweezers with techniques from quantum optics to break the quantum limit to measurement precision, and used holographic beam shaping to increase trapping stiffness. Now he will begin developing a new fluorescent microscopy technology to image neuronal activity at greater depths.