OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
In the meantime, the OxTalks site will remain active and events will continue to be published.
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Metal-Induced Energy Transfer (MIET) Imaging is a recently developed method that allows for nanometre resolution along the optical axis. It is based on the fact that, when placing a fluorescent molecule close to a metal, its fluorescence properties change dramatically, due to electromagnetic coupling of its excited state to surface plasmons in the metal. This is very similar to Förster Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) where the fluorescence properties of a donor are changed by the proximity of an acceptor that can resonantly absorb energy emitted by the donor. In particular, one observes a strongly modified lifetime of its excited state. This coupling between an excited emitter and a metal film is strongly dependent on the emitter’s distance from the metal. We have used this effect for mapping the basal membrane of live cells with an axial accuracy of ~3 nm. The method is easy to implement and does not require any change to a conventional fluorescence lifetime microscope; it can be applied to any biological system of interest, and is compatible with most other super-resolution microscopy techniques that enhance the lateral resolution of imaging. Moreover, it is even applicable to localizing individual molecules, thus offering the prospect of three-dimensional single-molecule localization microscopy with nanometre isotropic resolution for structural biology. I will also present latest developments of MIET where we use a single layer of graphene instead of a metal film that allows for increasing the spatial resolution down to few Ångströms (Graphene-Induced Energy Transfer or GIET). In combination with single-molecule localization microscopy methods such as dSTORM or PAINT, MIET/GIET imaging offers nanometric isotropic resolution for bioimaging of molecular complexes and cellular structures.