3A-O2-1620 PDF
Single-molecule and mass imaging approaches to cellular biology
All biological systems share the fundamental unit, a cell, which is composed of biological molecules. Cell membrane plays an important various functions for cell survival, such as receiving and processing environmental information, membrane potential regulation, ion homeostasis, motility regulation, and so on. Recent advances in super-resolution single-molecule microscopy became possible to obtain the position information of membrane proteins with nanometer accuracy. There is a possibility of reproducing the spatial dynamics of membrane proteins and lipids in the computer, if we can obtain quantitative data about spatial distribution of proteins and the lipid composition with the dynamic parameters such as reaction rates and the diffusion coefficients. In this talk, I would like to show our efforts on the development of new correlative microscope in which both single-molecules of proteins and mass imaging of lipid composition can be visualized on the membrane of cells.