Biophysics & Soft Condensed Matter

Abstracts of papers in press or submitted:

Jay T. Groves, Raghuveer Parthasarathy, and Martin B. Forstner, "Fluorescence Imaging of Membrane Dynamics," Annu. Rev. Biomed. Eng. (in press, 2008).

Abstract: Imaging membrane dynamics is an important goal, motivated by the abundance of biochemical and biophysical events that are orchestrated at, or by, cellular membranes. The short length scales, fast time scales, and environmental requirements of membrane phenomena present challenges to imaging experiments. Several technical advances offer means to overcome these challenges, and we describe here three powerful techniques applicable to membrane imaging: total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF) microscopy, fluorescence interference contrast (FLIC) microscopy, and fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS). For each, we discuss the physics
underpinning the approach, its practical implementation, and recent examples
highlighting its achievements in exploring the membrane environment.