Techniques and facilities

Our group brings together excellent and state-of-the-art research facilities in both biochemistry and single-molecule biophysics: a large molecular biology/biochemistry ML1 laboratory, and individual dedicated single-molecule laboratories equipped with a diverse set of home-made and commercial instruments.

ML1 biology lab

The ML1 biology lab include excellent wet lab equipment and an in-house protein purification facility. As part of the Bionanoscience department, we have also access to mass spectrometry, dynamic light scattering, and electron microscopy facilities.

Single-molecule laboratories

Our single-molecule laboratories are equipped with Lumicks C-trap and Q-trap instruments that combine optical tweezers (OT) force spectroscopy together with confocal microscopy, as well as with different state-of-the-art wide-field fluorescence microscopes that allow us to perform in vitro as well as in vivo imaging experiments. Using the latter, we perform live cell imaging, Co-localized Single-Molecule Spectroscopy (CoSMoS), and fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) experiments. A collection of magnetic tweezers (MT) force spectroscopy instruments (for force, displacement and torque measurement) complete our set of cutting-edge single-molecule instrumentation.

As part of the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience Delft, we also have access to  The Kavli Nanolab Imaging Centre (KNIC)  which offers complementary state-of-the-art light microscopy equipment such as Structured Illumination Super Resolution Microscopy (SIM), Spinning Disk Confocal Microscopy, and Time-Correlated Single-Photon Counting Fluorescent Lifetime Imaging Microscopy (TCSPC-FLIM), as well as high-resolution cryo-electron microscopy.