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Friday Evening Lecture Series
06/18/10
Lillie Auditorium, 8:00 PM
Porter Lecture - "Breakthroughs in Imaging Using Photoactivatable Fluorescent Proteins"
Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz, National Institutes of Health
Introduced by Gary Borisy
Press Release
Lecture Abstract:
Photoactivatable fluorescent proteins (PA-FPs) are molecules that switch to a new fluorescent state in response to activation to generate a high level of contrast. Several types of PA-FPs have been developed, including PA-FPs that fluoresce green or red, or convert from green to red in response to activating light. The optical ‘‘highlighting’’ capability of PA-FPs has led to the rise of novel imaging techniques providing important new biological insights. These range from in cellulo pulse-chase labeling for tracking subpopulations of cells, organelles or proteins under physiological settings, to super-resolution imaging of single molecules for determining intracellular protein distributions at nanometer precision. The use of PA-FPs in super-resolution imaging of single molecules is a rapidly emerging field of microscopy that improves the spatial resolution of light microscopy by over an order of magnitude (10-20 nm resolution). It is based on the controlled activation and sampling of sparse subsets of photoconvertible fluorescent molecules whose illumination centroids are fitted and then summed into a final super resolution image, revealing the complex distribution of dense populations of molecules within subcellular structures with nanometer precision. The full potential of PA-FPs in conventional, diffraction-limited and super-resolution imaging is only beginning to be realized. Here, I discuss the diverse array of PA-FPs available to researchers and the new imaging techniques they make possible for unraveling long-standing biological questions.
Dr. Lippincott-Schwartz’s laboratory uses live-cell imaging approaches, particularly novel GFP technologies, to analyze the spatio-temporal behavior and binding interactions of molecules in cells. Her research to modify and create new uses for GFP has led to a revolutionary new technique in light microscopy and allows the tracking of single molecules inside cells as never before. Dr. Lippincott-Schwartz received a B.A. from Swarthmore College, an M.S. from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University. She is a tenured investigator and Chief of the Section on Organelle Biology at the National Institutes of Health’s Cell Biology and Metabolism Branch and has been a faculty member in the MBL Physiology course since 2007. Dr. Lippincott-Schwartz was named a Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science and elected to the National Academy of Sciences, both in 2008, was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies in 2009, and has received several NIH awards.
Dr. Gary Borisy will introduce Dr. Lippincott-Schwartz. Dr. Borisy became the MBL’s 13th Director and 3rd CEO in 2006. Previously he was Associate Vice President for Research and the Leslie B. Arey Professor of Cell and Molecular Biology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. He received his B.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Dr. Borisy is the author of more than 200 papers, the editor of two books, and has received numerous professional honors. In 2009 he was elected into the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Borisy has served as president of the American Society for Cell Biology and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the biotech company CombinatoRx.
About the Porter Lecture:
The annual Porter Lecture is held in honor of Dr. Keith Roberts Porter, a former Director of the MBL considered by many to be the "Father" of the field of cell biology. It is sponsored by the Keith R. Porter Endowment whose goal is to support communication and education in cell biology.
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