Berlin 2015 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 15: Posters: Multi-cellular systems

BP 15.8: Poster

Monday, March 16, 2015, 17:30–19:30, Poster A

SPIM applications in organismal biology — •Philipp Struntz, Rolf Fickentscher, and Matthias Weiss — Experimental Physics I, University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany

Fluorescence imaging is the method of choice when aiming at mo-nitoring dynamic phenomena during embryogenesis. Yet, standard techniques like confocal imaging suffer from inducing a considerable amount of photobleaching and phototoxicity which hampers long-term observations. We have designed and constructed a fully automated single-plane illumination microscope (SPIM) for imaging embryos of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans in the early stages of development [1]. The combination of rapid widefield detection with optical sectioning and reduced bleaching allows for long-term, three-dimensional imaging of living specimen with a high spatio-temporal resolution. Using our SPIM setup, we have quantified cell movement and arrangment during early embryogenesis. Moreover, we have performed fluorescence correlation spectroscopy measurements (SPIM-FCS) on zygotes of C. elegans that expressed GFP-tagged PIE-1 and PLCdelta1. While the former reports on local diffusion properties during a vital protein condensation phenomenon, the latter series of experiments has probed the diffusional mobility of a vital peripheral membrane protein. Our data show that SPIM provides a versatile tool to explore embryogenetic events on several length scales, i.e. it is hence well suited to examine dynamic pattern formation in organismal biology.

[1] R. Fickentscher, P. Struntz & M. Weiss, Biophys. J. 105, 1805 (2013)