Experimental Physiology

Scanning Ion Conductance Microscopy Laboratory

SICM image of stereocilia of wild-type inner hair cells - click to enlarge

Welcome to Yuri Korchev's laboratory - home of Scanning Ion Conductance Microscopy for biology, chemistry, physics and much more!

We are passionate and proud of our imaging technique that we developed over the years into true multifunctional tool for interdisciplinary studies.

Molecular Biology has advanced – we know much about individual molecular components that make up living cells, and this discipline has developed a descriptive, information-based language, modeling molecular interactions. However, the challenge now is to fully understand the functional integration of these components: For this, we need more detail on the physical properties of intracellular structures, and how biology's molecular machines are built. This basis, in turn, will enable drug development and therapy.

This approach ultimately requires the development of novel biophysical methods. For example, image living and functioning cells on the nanoscale and make quantitative measurements down to the level of individual molecules and their complexes. The development of such methods is truly multidisciplinary, requiring physicists, biophysicists, molecular biologists and clinicians to develop and apply these new technologies. 

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