ICFO in Chemical Science
A collaboration between KU Leuven and the group led by Prof. Loza-Alvarez on the cover of Chemical Science.
April 19, 2012
The paper Molecular engineering of chromophores for combined second-harmonic and
two-photon fluorescence in cellular imaging was published in Chemical Science by Evelien De Meulenaere, Stijn Van Cleuvenbergen, Jean-Marc Taymans, Rik Paesen, Jos Vanderleyden, Marcel Ameloot, and Koen Clays (U. Leuven, Belgium), and Wei-Qiang Chen and Mei-Ling Zheng (Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China) in collaboration with ICFO PhD student Sotiris Psilodimitrakopoulos and Prof. Pablo Loza-Alvarez, leader at ICFO of the Ultrafast imaging and nonlinear microscopy group.
The research was partially conducted on an SHG microscope at ICFO’s Super-Resolution Light Nanoscopy Facility SLN@ICFO, where imaging of cultured HeLa cells by second-harmonic generation and two-photon excited fluorescence were performed. The cells were stained with specific dyes, recently designed for nonlinear imaging, which mainly targeted the mitochondria. The SHG shows that some of them arrange themselves very nicely inside membranes. Further research will point out for optimizing the use of fluorescent proteins for SHG imaging.
The research was partially conducted on an SHG microscope at ICFO’s Super-Resolution Light Nanoscopy Facility SLN@ICFO, where imaging of cultured HeLa cells by second-harmonic generation and two-photon excited fluorescence were performed. The cells were stained with specific dyes, recently designed for nonlinear imaging, which mainly targeted the mitochondria. The SHG shows that some of them arrange themselves very nicely inside membranes. Further research will point out for optimizing the use of fluorescent proteins for SHG imaging.