Meeting Report - Applications of SPM & Optical Tweezers

JPK Instruments, which this year celebrates 10 years in the life sciences and nanotechnology sectors, hosted their eighth annual symposium on the applications of scanning probe microscopy (SPM) alongside the second annual symposium on optical tweezers. The symposia were held on the 14-15th October in Berlin at the Umspannwerk Ost center which provided a comfortable and relaxed surrounding inspiring an excellent
dialogue between delegates. More than 130 attendees participated over the two day program.

With speakers coming from leading laboratories across Europe and the USA, it is quite a challenge to pick highlights from the eighteen oral talks. While leading professors including Juergen Rabe (Humboldt University, Berlin) and Daniel Mueller (TU Dresden) gave their customary high stand of review, a young postgraduate student, Patrick Bosshart from Basel University, stole the show on the opening day with a confident insight on what you learn from force spectroscopy when studying ion channels.

This year’s SPM poster winner was Dr Clemens Franz from the DFGCenter for Functional Nanostructures in Karlsruhe. He cleverly used iPod technology to complement his presentation on elastic, fullythree dimensional microstructure scaffolds for cell force measurements.

The runner up was Dr Neil Crampton from the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leeds. His poster described the mechanical unfolding of proteins using a novel laserfeedback controlled cantilever. The third place award went to post graduate student, Marc Richter from the Institute of Photonic Technology in Jena. It explored TERS for label-free cell diagnostics.

The optical tweezers day began with an overview covering the rapid development of the technique from Professor Heinrich Hoerber of the University of Bristol. Subsequent cutting edge applications presentations highlighted how optical tweezers sheds new light on the dynamics of cellular and molecular processes. Dr Remus Dame from Leiden University described how to unravel the organization of chromatin. The talk from Dr Satish Rao from ICFO in Barcelona also stood out describing how optical tweezers can be coupled with Raman spectroscopy to follow biosystem dynamics. The effect of cancer on red blood cells was most effectively demonstrated.

The optical tweezers poster winner was Ms. Elisa D’Este from the CNR-INFM-National Laboratory TASC in Trieste. She applied the technique to stimulate and track hippocampal neurons using BDNF beads. The two runners-up were post graduate students from the BIOTEC-TU in Dresden. Mohammed Mahamdeh presented an instrumental technique poster describing optical tweezers with millikelvin precision of
temperature controlled objectives and base-pair resolution. Anita Jannasch in third place looked at the optical trapping of anti-reflection-coated titania microspheres providing insight to the study of nanonewton forces.

Reflecting on this year’s meeting, Torsten Jähnke, CTO and cofounder of JPK said he was very happy to see so many people attending the symposia. “The quality of the talks was again very high. I was extremely impressed with the poster sessions. The standard, particularly in the optical tweezers session, was of the highest quality. We look forward to continuing this series of scientific meetings for many years to come.”

For more details visit www.nanobioviews.net. 1Jezz Leckenby Email: Jezz@netdyalog.com