Painting life with DNA
Dr. Maier S. Avendaño Amado - Harvard Medical School, Harvard University
Understanding biological complexity at the nanoscale requires the development of new and more advance optical tools. Current super-resolution techniques offer unprecedented spatial resolution, however, a precise identification and quantification of multiple molecules that cannot be spatially resolved remains challenging. Together with my group of work I have developed and validated a quantitative multiplexing super-resolution approach, based on programmable autonomous blinking of a nucleic acid probe (technique named DNA-PAINT). I will first discuss the general principles for obtaining multiplexed 2D and 3D super-resolution imaging, for integer molecular counting, and for detecting specific endogenous protein interactions in cells. In the second part, I will present some biological applications of this new imaging approach for in situ visualization of single-copy regions of the genome in mouse fibroblasts, and finally for analyzing the complex interactions of 5 receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) simultaneously within their native cellular context in a breast cancer cell line.