Engineering Approaches to Biomolecular Motors

Engineering Approaches to Biomolecular Motors: From in vitro to in vivo Friday Speaker Abstracts

Application of Biomolecular Transport Systems for Optical Imaging Stefan Diez . B CUBE - Center for Molecular Bioengineering, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany. Our lab is interested in the development and the application of novel optical techniques to investigate molecular transport in cell biology and nanotechnology. Building on our experience in single molecule biophysics and in the in vitro reconstruction of subcellular mechano-systems we study cooperative effects in motor transport and cell motility. Moreover we aim to apply biomolecular motor systems in synthetic, engineered environments for the generation, manipulation and detection of nanostructures. Towards this end, the talk will focus on how kinesin-propelled microtubules can be used as probes to measure nanoscopic surface topographies and optical near fields. In contrast to many alternative methods, microtubules possess the advantages that they can be applied in a highly parallel manner and that they do not alter the fields to be measured.

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