Single Molecule Imaging-based Design of HIV-1 vaccines
The HIV-1 vaccine research has re-emerged in the last few years due to the identification of antibodies that neutralize most HIV-1 circulating strains. A deeper understanding of the mechanistic mode of target recognition for these antibodie represents a big hope in the field. This project aims at understanding and characterizing polyclonal antibody responses to aid rational vaccine design via radically new technologies on light microscopy. The molecular mechanism of time-resolved HIV-1 fusion will be visualized and quantified on the surface of living cells by combining real-time single virus tracking, fluorescence fluctuation spectroscopy and 3D single molecule localization microscopy (SMLM) imaging.