IOCB Prague

Josef Lazar Group

Advanced Optical Microscopy
Research Group
Junior
PHYS cluster

About our group

Josef Lazar's group moved to the 1st Faculty of Medicine, Charles University. The content of this page is no longer updated and serves for archive purposes only.


The Laboratory of Advanced Optical Microscopy develops advanced techniques of optical microscopy and uses them to gain information about mechanisms of molecular processes taking place in living cells and organisms. The Laboratory has developed the technique of two-photon polarization microscopy, which allows sensitive observations of changes in conformation of membrane proteins. Such conformational changes can occur, for example, in response to a therapeutic drug or to changes in cell membrane voltage. The laboratory is equipped by a state-of-the-art laser scanning confocal/two-photon microscope (Olympus FluoView 1200MPE-IX83) adapted for single- and two-photon polarization microscopy. The microscope's versatile design enables accommodating a wide range of microscopy techniques and custom-made solutions. The Laboratory's multidisciplinary expertise in biochemistry, molecular and cell biology, biophysics, optics, electronic engineering, computer programming and mathematical modeling allows tackling of a wide range of difficult scientific questions.

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Publications

All publications
Directionality of light absorption and emission in representative fluorescent proteins
Directionality of light absorption and emission in representative fluorescent proteins
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 117 (51): 32395-32401 (2020)
Fluorescent proteins have been used extensively in many areas of life sciences. Many of their applications rely on their various biophysical properties, such as excitation and emission wavelengths, excited state lifetimes, or sensitivity to the molecular environment. One aspect of fluorescent proteins that has remained largely neglected is the directionality of their optical properties. In the present work, we describe our experimental determination of the directionality of light absorption and emission in several commonly used fluorescent proteins. Our findings improve our understanding of fundamental properties of fluorescent proteins, and expand the possibilities of development and applications of genetically encoded fluorescent probes.
Components of the Gs signaling cascade exhibit distinct changes in mobility and membrane domain localization upon β2‐adrenergic receptor activation
Traffic 21 (4): 324-332 (2020)
The G protein Gi1 exhibits basal coupling but not preassembly with G protein-coupled receptors
Journal of Biological Chemistry 292 (23): 9690-9698 (2017)
Nonlinear Optical Properties of Fluorescent Dyes Allow for Accurate Determination of Their Molecular Orientations in Phospholipid Membranes
Journal of Physical Chemistry B 119 (30): 9706-9716 (2015)

Group

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