Michael krieg

SENSOCELL is the ideal tool to bring mechanobiology and force measurements into animal model systems, such as C. elegans, Drosophila or Zebrafish.

Prof. Dr. MIchael Krieg

Neurophotonics and Mechanical Systems Biology, Institute of Photonics Sciences (ICFO)

Dr. Michael Krieg leads the Neurophotonics and Mechanical Systems Biology group at the Institute of Photonics Sciences (ICFO) in Barcelona. After a 6-year postdoc at Stanford University, Dr. Krieg landed at ICFO in 2017 with a Starting Grant from the ERC. During his career, Dr. Krieg has mainly focused in the use of AFM to study the mechanics of cells, with a particular interest in mechanosensation and -transduction.

With the help of a FEDER grant, Dr. Krieg’s lab co-funded a SENSOCELL optical tweezers system from IMPETUX integrated with spinning disk confocal microscopy. The combination of these two modalities is unique and sparks many different collaborations between biologists, microscopists and physicists from many different institutes.

The unique force measuring capabilities of SENSOCELL offer Dr. Krieg the possibility to address fundamental questions about the mechanobiology of cells. In a recent research [1], his group has shown the potential of IMPETUX’s technology to characterize the mechanical properties of nuclei inside suspended and confined cells. The flexibility of system is also key in the cell membrane tension experiments carried out by the group, where they study the interplay between mechanical forces and calcium signalling in neurons.

When asked about the SENSOCELL, Dr. Krieg says: “With the optical sectioning capacity of the spinning disk confocal and the ability to measure forces readily inside living cells and animals, this instrument is the ideal tool to bring mechanobiology and force measurements into animal model systems, such as C. elegans, Drosophila or Zebrafish.”

Useful links

Cell membrane forces application webpage

Nucleus mechanics webpage

livinglight.icfo.eu

 

References

[1] V. Venturi, F. Pezzano, F. Català-Castro, H.- M. Häkkinen, S. Jiménez-Delgado, M. Colomer-Rosell, M. Marro-Sánchez, Q. Tolosa-Ramon, S. Paz-López, M. A. Valverde, P. Loza-Alvarez, M. Krieg, S. Wieser and V. Ruprecht, “The nucleus measures shape changes for cellular proprioception to control dynamic cell behavior” SCIENCE | 16 Oct 2020: Vol. 370, Issue 6514, eaba2644. DOI: 10.1126/science.aba2644