Our current research is focused on uncovering the molecular mechanisms that cause proteins to misfold and aggregate in live model systems of Alzheimer?s Disease (AD) and Parkinson?s disease (PD). To enable this work we have developed a range of advanced optical imaging techniques that permit us to look at these processes with unprecedented detail. Two recent developments are key for this research: 1) Amyloids develop an intrinsic fluorescence that reports on the aggregation state of neurotoxic proteins This discovery has permitted us to design highly specific and quantitative in vivo sensors of amyloidogenesis (see Kaminski Schierle et al., 2011) 2) direct Stochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscopy (dSTORM) quantifies the morphology of toxic species in cell models of disease We were the first group able to visualise the morphology of aggregate species and their processing in situ in neuronal cells, at a resolution down to 10 nm (see Kaminski Schierle et al., 2011)
