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Engineering Approaches to Biomolecular Motors: From in vitro to in vivo Friday Speaker Abstracts
26
Application of Biomolecular Transport Systems for Optical Imaging
Stefan Diez
.
B CUBE - Center for Molecular Bioengineering, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden,
Germany.
Our lab is interested in the development and the application of novel optical techniques to
investigate molecular transport in cell biology and nanotechnology. Building on our experience
in single molecule biophysics and in the in vitro reconstruction of subcellular mechano-systems
we study cooperative effects in motor transport and cell motility. Moreover we aim to apply
biomolecular motor systems in synthetic, engineered environments for the generation,
manipulation and detection of nanostructures. Towards this end, the talk will focus on how
kinesin-propelled microtubules can be used as probes to measure nanoscopic surface
topographies and optical near fields. In contrast to many alternative methods, microtubules
possess the advantages that they can be applied in a highly parallel manner and that they do not
alter the fields to be measured.