News and Press Releases

July 6, 2020

Customer Andrea Soranno studies SARS-CoV-2 virus with MicroTime 200

A preprint with first results is now available

Andrea Soranno from the Washington University in St. Louis and colleagues applied their expertise in single molecule FRET (smFRET) and Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy (FCS) to the study of SARS-CoV-2 viruses. They used their time-resolved fluorescence MicroTime 200 to characterize the SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid (N) protein, which is responsible for viral genome packaging. The flexible and dynamic N protein, which contains three intrinsically disordered domains, undergoes liquid-liquid phase separation with RNA, and compacts long RNA molecules. Therefore, compounds that interfere with N protein function or modulate phase separation may disrupt viral assembly, which would make them candidate drugs for COVID-19.

The group shared their insights in a preprint on bioRxiv: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.17.158121v1

Fluorescence microscope MicroTime 200: product website

July 1, 2020

Second round of free webinars with new topics

From July to August, we host live sessions every week

In spring we held our first series of free webinars. The 9 webinars on different topics like materials science, picosecond pulsed lasers, time-resolved fluorescence microscopy, Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging (FLIM), scanning Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy, and environmental sensing with FLIM were greatly appreciated by more than 800 participants.
Our specialists invite you now to a second round of webinars. From July to August, we host live sessions every week that highlight the power of optoelectronical measurements and how they can help you in your everyday research challenges. The line-up includes several new topics as well as repeats of many well-liked subjects from the first round. So if you missed out on the first series, this is your chance to experience it live!

Topics and dates: www.picoquant.com/webinars

June 25, 2020

User‐friendly single‐photon source operating at telecom wavelengths

PicoQuant developed the dedicated picosecond pulsed diode laser

A user‐friendly, fiber‐coupled, single‐photon source operating at telecom wavelengths is presented on the latest cover of "Advanced Quantum Technologies". This single-photon source is the result of a joint German-Polish project ("FI-SEQUR") with partners Wrocław University of Science and Technology, Technische Universität Berlin, Maria Curie Sklodowska University Lublin, Fibrain Sp. z o.o, JCMwave GmbH and PicoQuant. In this project, PicoQuant has developed a dedicated picosecond pulsed diode laser to efficiently excite a quantum dot that launches single photons at a wavelength of 1.3 µm directly into a single‐mode optical fiber. The whole arrangement is integrated into a 19ʺ compatible housing to enable stand‐alone operation by cooling via a compact Stirling cryocooler. The realized source delivers single photons with a multiphoton events probability as low as 0.15 and a single‐photon emission rate of up to 73 kHz into a standard telecom single‐mode fiber.

Paper: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qute.202000018
PicoQuant's pulsed diode lasers: https://www.picoquant.com/products/category/pulsed-lasers-and-leds
 

June 19, 2020

Study on membrane asymmetry

Measured with a Nikon A1 confocal equipped with PicoQuant´s LSM upgrade kit

Recently Ilya Levental, Assistant Professor of Integrative Biology and Pharmacology at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston toghether with his coworkers published an impressive study in Nature Chemical Biology in which FLIM and FCS, combined with a smart staining protocol and atomistic simulations, shed light on the structural asymmetry of plasma membranes. FLIM of the lipid packing reporter dye Di4, which enables leaflet-selective staining of the plasma membrane, revealed that the outer leaflet is more tightly packed. Correspondingly, FCS diffusion measurements of fluorescent proteins anchored either to the outer or inner leaflet were consistent with computational predictions that inner leaflet components diffuse faster. For this work, they used their Nikon A1 confocal equipped with PicoQuant´s LSM upgrade kit.

Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41589-020-0529-6
PicoQuant's LSM upgrade kit: product website

May 20, 2020

Jörg Enderlein and Christian Eggeling about scanning FCS

Significance and advantages of this method

A new line scan mode in our SymPhoTime 64 software now allows acquiring scanning Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy (sFCS) data with our time-resolved microscope MicroTime 200. In interviews that were given during our 25th Workshop on “Single Molecule Spectroscopy and Super-resolution Microscopy” in September 2019 by Jörg Enderlein from the Georg-August-University Göttingen, Germany and Christian Eggeling from the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Germany, they also talked about the significance and advantages of scanning FCS.

Video: Jörg Enderlein and Christian Eggeling about scanning FCS

Product website: MicroTime 200

Application website: Scanning FCS