Gordon F. Kirkbright Bursary 2002

In 1985 a fund was established as a memorial to Gordon Kirkbright in recognition of his contributions to analytical spectroscopy and to science in general. The fund is administered by the Committee of the Association of British Spectroscopists (ABS) and by the ABS Trust. The award enables promising non-tenured young scientists of any nation to attend a recognised scientific meeting or visit a place of learning.

Applications are invited for 2002 Gordon Kirkbright Bursaries. The award is not restricted to spectroscopists. The closing date for entries is 30 April 2002.

Full further information contact: John Chalmers, Department of Physical Chemistry, School of Chemistry, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK, Fax: +44-1642-714306; vibspecconsult@aol.com.

Record photonics numbers

Attendance at Photonex 2001, the UK photonics exhibition, increased by 40% and there was a record number of exhibitors as well. Next year, Photonex 2002 will take place as part of Photon02, which offers research conferences as well as an exhibition. Photon02 will take place from 2 to 5 September in Cardiff, UK, and Photonex 2002 will run from 3 to 4 September. www.photon02.co.uk, www.photonex.org.

Single molecule detection

The 7th International Workshop on Single Molecule Detection and Ultrasensitive Analysis in the Life Sciences was held by PicoQuant in Berlin Adlershof, Germany, on 26–28 September 2001. Seventy-five researchers attended. Amongst them was Watt Webb, Professor of Physics at Cornell University. The organisers believe that the workshop can be best summed up by the following from his closing remarks.

“This conference is different. I was very pleased to see all the young brains here and all the bright ideas. The area is bubbling and in the last years, we have seen an amazing development of new tools. They deliver what we need for new applications: accuracy, precision and quality.

What we need now is to tackle the applications in the life sciences that matter. There are lots of challenges in the biological and medical fields and they are only beginning to surface at single molecule conferences like this one.

Taking on these challenges needs careful attention to the subtleties of single molecule work.

Watch out when working with immobilised molecules. Will that enzyme still behave itself when stuck on a surface? My wish is that we should see more answers to such questions in the literature. You can get around these problems but you need to pay attention.

Delegates at the 7th International Workshop on Single Molecule Detection and Ultrasensitive Analysis in the Life Sciences.

We need robust fluorophores. Quantum dots looked promising but they blink. Yet, there have been good ideas to overcome the blinking problem. Red Fluorescent Protein is good and very stable and a lot of work with RFP has been published. There are alternatives to fluorescence possible in second and third harmonic generation, and it should be a challenge to see if they work for imaging biological structures. There are important applications in investigations on membranes.

Two-photon excitation is another topic with more potential yet to be realised. New fluorophores are providing new tools, but in using fluorescence, a serious barrier is that nobody knows ‘anything’ about the photophysics of photobleaching. Background in biological materials is another big problem to be solved, but background can be useful! Look at the intrinsic fluorophores to use them in imaging biological function. To avoid it, consider that background fluorescence can also photobleach!

The bottom line is: here is a group of bright young people with lots of good ideas. Tackle these important biological problems! Use your best methods. Many problems are inherently single molecule problems. For instance, body fluids can carry very ‘sparse’ aggregations involved in disease. Think about the plaques involved in Alzheimer's disease, prion diseases, and especially BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy)! Consider clustering and aggregation in cytoplasms. Lots of challenges here! In your work, keep asking are we using the right tools? Do we know anything about it? Challenges in biological research! There are lots of elegant techniques. Use them!”

A special prize of DM1500 was awarded for the “Best Student Paper” by PicoQuant. The prize was split between Phillip Tinnefeld (Heidelberg) and Enno Schweinberger (Göttingen). The best poster prize also had to be given to two people due to the quality of the presentations: Elke Haustein (Göttingen) and Gerhard Blab (Leiden).