About the ELMI

ELMI was created in 2001 to establish a unique communication network between European scientists working in the field of light microscopy and the manufacturers of their equipment.

PhD thesis in Microscopy, University of Bordeaux, France

Host Laboratory:

Interdisciplinary Institute for Neuroscience (IINS), UMR5297, Bordeaux – France

In the team “Quantitative Imaging of the Cell” directed by Jean-Baptiste Sibarita.

Start:

The PhD is financed through the ANR project “soLIVE” granted in 2016. The PhD will start during the 2018 year. There is a possibility to first perform a Master 2 internship or a last year engineer school internship prior to the PhD.

Keywords:

Light-sheet microscopy; Super-resolution; Single Particle Tracking; Structured Illumination Microscopy; Drosophila embryos.

Project description:

A PhD position is currently available at the Interdisciplinary Institute for Neuroscience (IINS) at Bordeaux to develop new super-resolution approaches for probing the fast and long-term dynamics of proteins in depth within complex tissues at high spatial resolution. This work will be based on a light-sheet microscope recently developed in the team and named soSPIM, which combines a single-objective with micro-fabricated chips featuring 45° mirrors1,2. We already demonstrated the capabilities of this systems to perform multi-scale 3D imaging from the whole drosophila embryos scale down to the single cell scale. In addition, we have shown that the combination of the optical sectioning provided by the light sheet excitation with a high numerical objective enables to perform single molecule based super-resolution up to 30 µm deep above the coverslip.

The aim of the project will be to improve the imaging capabilities of the soSPIM system to probe the various dynamics of adhesion proteins during the development of drosophila embryos at high spatial resolution. It will consist of implementing on the soSPIM system single particle tracking approaches and structured illumination microscopy methods3 to probe the fast and long-term dynamics of proteins respectively. To achieve this goal, we will implement both excitation beam shaping4 and adaptive optics5 in order to optimize the excitation and detection paths, respectively, and implement specific micro-fabrication processes to create devices dedicated to the imaging of drosophila embryos. In collaboration with G. Giannone team (IINS, Bordeaux) and N. Brown team (Gurdon Institute, Cambridge), we will then study the formation and maturation of adhesion sites during drosophila embryos development and their role in muscle tissue formation.

For additional information please check the job offer.