Atomic Force Microscopy Resource

Thursday, October 27, 2011 — Core Poster Session
10:00 a.m. – Noon	South Lobby of Building 10	NIBIB	CORE-24

Author

• None

Abstract

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is a type of non-optical microscopy that employs a sharp probe to describe topographical features at sub-nm resolution and measure forces down to a few pN. AFM can also be combined with other techniques, such as fluorescence or Raman spectroscopy, for simultaneous observations and single molecule identification. Furthermore, force spectroscopy can be used to characterize material properties at the nanoscale and to examine antigen-antibody binding events. We present a few typical applications of the technology including high resolution imaging of protein-DNA complexes, simultaneous AFM-TIRF, lipid bilayer characterization, and molecular identification by force spectroscopy. The Resource operates two Bruker instruments, the Picoforce/Multimode and the Bioscope Catalyst. The latter is equipped with epi-fluorescence and TIRF optics with several laser lines allowing simultaneous registration of AFM and fluorescence images for single molecule identification. In addition we run another AFM instrument dedicated to force spectroscopy (Force Robot by JPK) for molecular pulling and molecular identification studies. The AFM facility is open to a wide range of collaborative projects.

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