Platform 2: Advanced light and electron microscopy
Directors
Prof. Dr. Michael Hensel (University of Osnabrück)
Dr. Katherina Psathaki (University of Osnabrück)
‘Seeing is believing’, and the complex, highly dynamic interactions of microbial pathogens with host cells and host organisms demand sophisticated imaging techniques for visualization and quantitative analyses. Recent technical advance in imaging techniques and new workflows that link various imaging modalities can be used to breach further barriers in the analyses of host pathogen-interactions.
Exit strategies of microbial pathogens are still under-investigated, and one reason is the limited experimental access to events of host cell exit. It is difficulty to visualize exit events that are rare in frequency and dynamic in nature of appearance. Conventional imaging strategies are hardly capable to register, in a reliable manner, the exit events relevant for investigations in SPP 2225. Our believe is that the low frequency of pathogen exit events, the lack of synchronicity of exit events in time and space, and the complex organization of host cell membranes and microbes during exit demands single cell approaches with ultrastructural resolution, rather than ensemble-based analyses.
The platform "Advanced Light- and Electron Microscopy" is integrated part of the iBIOS platform at the CellNanOs - Center of Cellular Nanoanalytics of the University of Osnabrück. The platform provides access to state-of-the imaging systems for projects of the SPP 2225:
- Fast confocal live cell imaging under BL2 conditions
- Super-resolution microscopy and singe molecule imaging
- Correlative light and electron microscopy (CLEM)
- CLEM with ultrastructural volumetric reconstruction (SFB-SEM, TEM tomography) - 3D EM
- User training in advanced imaging techniques
As the analyses of various host-pathogens systems is likely to be performed with similar workflows and identical instrumentation at the proposed platform, the resulting data will be ideally suited for comparative analyses of pathogen exit strategies. We also aim to develop new imaging workflows in response to the demands of projects on SPP 2225.
The iBiOS platform to imaging pathogen exit is operated by Dr. Katherina Psathaki and Prof. Dr. Michael Hensel at CellNanOs – Center of Cellular Nanoanalytics at the University of Osnabrück.
Further information iBiOs
https://www.ibios.uni-osnabrueck.de
Further information CellNanOs