Automated event-triggered MINFLUX imaging and tracking

The proposed project regards development of a targeted and automated MINFLUX microscopy acquisition scheme, with the addition of automated aberration correction.

MINFLUX has recently emerged as a promising super-resolution fluorescence microscopy technique for both imaging and molecule tracking, allowing investigation of biological systems down to single nanometer resolution while keeping the benefits of fluorescence microscopy at the cost of time-consuming acquisitions and small fields-of-view.

To improve imaging and tracking, an acquisition technique that automatically can choose regions of interest by monitoring the sample with faster confocal imaging is proposed. An automated aberration correction method will further be added to the microscope control.

Together this allows higher temporal resolution, higher throughput of processes of interest, and higher quality data deeper in samples.The research will be carried out using the MINFLUX microscope in place in the lab of Christian Eggeling, and custom-written control software that will interface with the microscope.

Real-time analysis pipelines to detect events of interest will be developed.

The acquisition method will be developed during the first year, the aberration correction method during the second, and the methods will be applied to biological questions where the benefits of the methods are crucial during the third, such as investigation of lipid membrane dynamics during nanoparticle endocytosis and virus docking.