Due to its compatibility with living systems, its single-molecule sensitivity and its specificity, fluorescence microscopy has been the workhorse for dynamic studies of structure and function at the cellular and sub-cellular levels for almost a century. However, many challenging questions of molecular and cellular biology remain beyond its conventional capabilities. The temporal and spatial resolution of conventional fluorescence microscopy pose fundamental limits for investigating the smallest and fastest puzzling mysteries of life.
For applications that require large fields-of-views, the single point scanning implementations, such as stimulated-emission-depletion (STED) microscopy, require long image recordings times (up to minutes), due to the fine sampling step size. Unless parallel acquisition is introduced the image recording time cannot be speeded-up much further without sacrificing either the filed-of-view, signal quality or spatial resolution, unless parallel acquisition is introduced. Structured- illumination-microscopy (SIM) parallelizes image recordings by using patterned light to excite fluorophores and a CCD to collect fluorescence. Structure-illumination- microscopy is usually limited to a factor of 2 be- yond the theoretical diffraction barrier, but offers the best trade-off between time resolution, spatial resolution and photo-toxicity.
The project aims to to combine SIM (and later SIM-SPIM) with the STED microscopy concept. In a nutshell, a specific spatial light pattern, able to induce stimulated emission, is overlapped with the typical excitation light pattern of SIM. As a result many parallel sub-diffraction fluorescence regions are generated whose signals are collected by a CCD. A small series of images are collected by translating the overlapped patterns and merged through image deconvolution to obtain spatial resolution well below a factor of 2.
Requirements:
The candidates should have a background in physics or related disciplines and experience in programming. Enthusiasm, an interdisciplinary attitude, and a strong team spirit in an interdisciplinary environment are a must.
Contacts:
Giuseppe Vicidomini
Email: giuseppe.vicidomini@iit.it
Alberto Diaspro
Email: alberto.diaspro@iit.it
Website: http://www.iit.it/
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