You are cordially invited to attend the seminar organized by the Department of Chemistry.
Title : Co-evolution of fluorophores and aptamers for super-resolution RNA imaging in live cells
Speaker: Murat Sünbül, Institute of Pharmacy and Molecular Biotechnology (IPMB), Heidelberg University (Germany).
Date : March 30th, 2021, Tuesday
Time : 12:30
This is an online seminar. To request the event link, please send a message to department.
Abstract :
Ribonucleic Acids (RNAs) play crucial roles in biology. Understanding their detailed biological functions is of utmost importance, as exemplified by the RNA virus SARS-CoV-2. However, direct observation of RNAs by optical fluorescence microscopy has been hampered by a lack of suitable tools. While many techniques are available for the imaging of cellular proteins, only a handful of methods are known for live cell RNA imaging, especially with modern super-resolution microscopy methods, which are indispensable for unraveling cellular structures and interactions inside cells.
In this talk, I will present how we harnessed synthetic chemistry and directed evolution methods to develop next generation probes and genetically encoded markers for super-resolution RNA imaging in living cells.
Bio :
Murat Sunbul is currently working as a team leader (since 2016) in the laboratories of Prof. Dr. Andres Jäschke at the Institute of Pharmacy and Molecular Biotechnology (IPMB), Heidelberg University (Germany). His research is mainly focused on developing innovative technologies for imaging biomolecules with super-resolution microscopy and deciphering complex molecular networks in living systems. He studied chemistry and received his master’s degree in organic chemistry under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Cihangir Tanyeli at the Middle East Technology University (Turkey). For his graduate studies, he went to the University of Chicago (USA), where he worked on directed evolution of enzymes by the phage display technology and developed novel site-specific protein labeling techniques (with Prof. Dr. Jun Yin). In 2011, he moved to Germany as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow to pursue his post-doctoral research in RNA imaging and fluorescent probe design at Heidelberg University, IPMB.