Events

Chemical and mechanical interrogation of biological systems … and beyond

Date: Wednesday 13 November 2019 16:00 - 17:00

Location: PP1 People's Palace, Mile End Campus

By: Dr Periklis Pantazis, Imperial College London
Abstract: In recent years, advances in imaging probes, microscopy techniques and bioinformatics image analysis have markedly expanded the imaging toolbox available to developmental biologists. Apart from conventional phenotypic studies, embryonic development is increasingly investigated in vivo with improved accuracy in time and space and more detailed quantitative analyses down to the single-cell level (reviewed in 1). To get more insight into the elaborate chemical and mechanical dynamics that underlie development, my laboratory addresses the growing imaging needs of the biological community by developing assays 2, imaging technologies 3-5, and reagents 6,7 for carrying out imaging with i) high spatiotemporal resolution at the single-cell level and with ii) sensitivities down to individual proteins. Such newly introduced and future imaging tools can then be used as a means of performing qualitative and quantitative imaging in order to mechanistically dissect development, disease progression, and tissue regeneration in vivo.

1 Pantazis, P. & Supatto, W. Advances in whole-embryo imaging: a quantitative transition is underway. Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol 15, 327-339, doi:10.1038/nrm3786 (2014).
2 Plachta, N., Bollenbach, T., Pease, S., Fraser, S. E. & Pantazis, P. Oct4 kinetics predict cell lineage patterning in the early mammalian embryo. Nat Cell Biol 13, 117-123, doi:10.1038/ncb2154 (2011).
3 Welling, M. et al. Primed Track, high-fidelity lineage tracing in mouse pre-implantation embryos using primed conversion of photoconvertible proteins. eLife 8, doi:10.7554/eLife.44491 (2019).
4 Dempsey, W. P. et al. In vivo single-cell labeling by confined primed conversion. Nat Methods 12, 645-648, doi:10.1038/nmeth.3405 (2015).
5 Mohr, M. A. & Pantazis, P. Primed Conversion: The New Kid on the Block for Photoconversion. Chemistry 24, 8268-8274, doi:10.1002/chem.201705651 (2018).
6 Pantazis, P., Maloney, J., Wu, D. & Fraser, S. E. Second harmonic generating (SHG) nanoprobes for in vivo imaging. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 107, 14535-14540, doi:10.1073/pnas.1004748107 (2010).
7 Mohr, M. A. et al. Rational Engineering of Photoconvertible Fluorescent Proteins for Dual-Color Fluorescence Nanoscopy Enabled by a Triplet-State Mechanism of Primed Conversion. Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) 56, 11628-11633, doi:10.1002/anie.201706121 (2017).