Keynote Talk - Wednesday, 15 September I 10:25 AM (CEST)
Prof. Dr. David Alsteens: "Probing Virus Binding Sites to Animal Cells Using Atomic Force Microscopy"
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Nanobiophysics lab, Université catholique de Louvain, Croix du sud 4-5, bte L7.07.07, 1348 Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium
During the last three decades, a series of key technological improvements turned atomic force microscopy (AFM) into a nanoscopic laboratory to directly observe and chemically characterize molecular and cellular biological systems under physiological conditions. I will present the key technological improvements that enable us to apply AFM as analytical laboratory to observe and quantify living biological systems at the nanoscale. I will report the use of advanced FD-based technology combined with chemically functionalized tips to probe the localization and interactions of chemical and biological sites on single native proteins and on living cells at high-resolution. I will present how an atomic force and confocal microscopy set-up allows the surface receptor landscape of cells to be imaged and the virus binding events within the first millisecond of contact with the cell to be mapped at high resolution (<50 nm). I will also highlight theoretical approaches to contour the free-energy landscape of early binding events between virus and cell surface receptors.
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Figure. Combination of AFM and fluorescence microscopy image showing an AFM tip functionalized with a single virus while mapping virus binding sites on living mammalian cells
Key publictaions:
- M. Koehler et al., Nat Commun. (2021) Accepted
- M. Delguste et al., Nano Letters 21 (2021) 847-83
- J. Yang et al., Nat Commun 11 (2020) 4541
- M. Koehler et al. , Nat. Commun. 10 (2019) 4460
- M. Delguste et al., Sci. Adv. 4 (2018) eaat1273
- M. Eubelen et al., Science (2018) eaat1178
- R. Newton et al., Nat. Protoc. 11 (2017) 2275-2292
- D. Alsteens et al. Nat. Nanotechnol. 12 (2017) 177-183
- D. Alsteens et al. Nat. Rev. Materials 2 (2017) 17008
- D. Alsteens et al. Nat. Methods 12 (2015) 845-851
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