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From analog to digital: exploring cell dynamics with single quantum dots

  • Robert Feulgen Lecture
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Abstract

Semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) have emerged as new fluorescent probes for biology. When combined with ultrasensitive optical techniques, they allow motions of individual biomolecules to be tracked in live cells with high signal-to-noise and over unprecedented durations. Single QD imaging readily offers a powerful tool to investigate the organization in cell membranes. Altogether QDs will contribute to more advanced biological imaging and enable new studies on the dynamics of cellular processes.

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Acknowledgements

I am indebted to Dr. Antoine Triller for many enlightening discussions and for the support provided by his laboratory. I am grateful to Sabine Lévi for her decisive contribution to the first single quantum dot tracking experiments. I thank all the members of the “Optics and Biology” group at Ecole Normale, as well as Laurent Cohen, Christophe Tribet, Valérie Marchi-Artzner, Giovanni Cappello, and Yohanns Bellaiche for their contributions and many fruitful discussions.

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  1. Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, Ecole Normale Supérieure, 24 rue Lhomond, 75005, Paris, France

    Maxime Dahan

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  1. Maxime Dahan
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Correspondence to Maxime Dahan.

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Robert Feulgen Lecture 2005 presented at the Joint Meeting of the Society for Histochemistry and The Histochemical Society in Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands

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Dahan, M. From analog to digital: exploring cell dynamics with single quantum dots. Histochem Cell Biol 125, 451–456 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00418-005-0105-x

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