AVS 58th Annual International Symposium and Exhibition
    Biomaterials Plenary Session Sunday Sessions
       Session BP-SuA

Invited Paper BP-SuA5
Nanoscale Surface Analysis of Living Cells using Atomic Force Microscopy

Sunday, October 30, 2011, 4:20 pm, Room 108

Session: Challenges in Biomaterials Analysis
Presenter: Yves Dufrene, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium
Correspondent: Click to Email

The emerging new field of “live-cell nanoscopy” has revolutionized the way biologists explore the living cell to molecular resolution. Whereas far-field fluorescence nanoscopy enables to study the nanoscale localization and dynamics of biomolecules in cells, recent developments in atomic force microscopy (AFM) techniques offer unprecedented opportunities for imaging the supramolecular organization of cell surfaces, and for probing the functional properties and interactions of their molecular machineries. In the past few years, AFM-based nanoscopy has enabled key breakthroughs in cell biology, including deciphering the nanoscale architecture of cell surfaces and their remodelling upon changing the cells functional state, understanding cellular mechanics and its functional implications, quantifying cell adhesion forces contributing to processes like tissue development and bacterial infection, unravelling the molecular elasticity of cellular proteins such as sensors and adhesion molecules, and elucidating how cells reassemble membrane receptors into nanodomains and modulate their functional state. In this talk, I will provide a survey of the recent work we have done using the AFM multifunctional toolbox, emphasizing its potential for understanding cell surface properties and interactions on the nanoscale.

References

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Nat. Commun., 1:27 (2010).

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 107 (2010), 20744-20749.

Nat. Methods, 8 (2011), 123-127.