
Seeing is believing. The newly established research group of Christian Franke is focused on the development of advanced optical and computational tools for the quantitative study of (cell-) biological questions. On one side, we work to advance super-resolution microscopy methods like single-molecule localization microscopy (SMLM, e.g. dSTORM, PALM) and random structured illumination microscopy (nanoSpeck3D) to quantitatively study the structure-function relationship of sub-cellular (trafficking) organelles, e.g. endosomes, with three-dimensional nanometer resolution. Here, we create novel hard- and software tools to push the limits of 3D volume, colour and time resolution. For this, we have home-built microscopes in our labs in the Abbeanum and are in close collaboration with the Eggeling group at ZAF and IPHT, providing a large range of complementary microscope setups. Recently, we branched out into macroscopic measurements of 3D volumes by stereophotogrammetry, a project led by Dr. Andreas Stark, also utilizing structured illumination, with which we can now measure objects on the centimeter to micrometer scale, thus bridging dimensions between the macro- and nanoscopic world. TBC
Video: Christian Franke
Single-Molecule Blinking of Fluorescent Dyes - Every spot represents a nanometer size dye molecule, imaged in a wide-field microscope onto a EMCCD chip. Detecting single molecules allows us to create super-resolution fluorescence images way beyond the Abbe diffraction limit.
Institut für Angewandte Optik und Biophysik
Max-Wien-Platz 1
07743 Jena