Dr Paolo Annibale, from the School of Physics and Astronomy and a member of the Centre of Biophotonics, has received a Research Leadership Award totalling £990,994. Funding will support Dr Annibale’s research project ‘Bottom-up nanoscale control of compartmentalized...

CoB Meeting Day - 1st September 2022 The Centre of Biophotonics celebrated a workshop on the  1st September 2022. The event was attended by 55 researchers working across four Schools (Physics and Astronomy, Medicine, Biology, Psychology and Neurosciences) and focused...

It is a real pleasure to welcome Dr Paolo Annibale as new Group Leader at the CoB. Paolo has been appointed Reader to the School of Physics and Astronomy and joined the School  and the CoB in January 2022. Paolo is an expert in single-molecule super-resolution...

A major advance in RNA imaging. Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is an important molecule that has long been thought of as a simple cellular messenger. However, it is now clear that this molecule is involved in several biological processes important for life. RNA has been found...

Scientists from the CoB learn to measure the tiniest forces living cells exert at sheer WARP speed. Writing in Nature Communications (Friday 11 June 2021), the team of researchers, led by the School of Physics and Astronomy, have developed an advanced microscopy...

The IMARIS 9.7 package will soon be available at the CoB for image analysis and processing. The package gives access to visualization of complex 3D and 4D datasets, smart detection of objects, tracking and lineage, time series, multi-channel processing, and many other...

A Zeiss LSM800 with Airyscan Super-resolution confocal microscope has been added to the CoB range of high-spatial resolution microscopes. The microscope bas been installed within the Biomedical Science Research Complex. Airyscan technology, unique to Zeiss, provides a...

The lightest light- the future of digital displays and brain science A team of scientists from the University of St Andrews has developed a new way of making the most durable, lightweight and thinnest light source available so far, which could revolutionize the future...

RS MacDonald Charitable Trust funds Neurophotonics research at the CoB We are pleased to announce that our recent bid to The RS MacDonald Charitable trust has been successful and they have generously agreed to fund Neurophotonics pump-priming grants (between £3.5-5K)...

Shining light on whisky Researchers from the University of St Andrews have developed an innovative new technique using lasers to accurately measure the authenticity of some of the world’s most exclusive whiskies – without ever removing the cap. Iconic bottles of...

Conformational order in an intrinsically disordered protein  Post-translational modification of proteins with ubiquitin represents a widely used mechanism for cellular regulation. Ubiquitin is covalently linked to the targeted protein by an E3 ligase. Although the...

The new webpage has just been launched! We want to thank every member of the Centre for their help, comments, proofreading and for sending all the material (videos, research information, microscopy images, etc). We are very grateful to Steve Smart (Information Officer...

Ultraviolet light has bright future in fight against Covid-19 A particular type of ultraviolet light known as far-UVC could be safely used for air disinfection in public places without harming people, according to new research carried out jointly at the University of...

Fighting TB with light and sound A UK-wide research team, led by the Schools of Physics and Astronomy and Medicine at University of St Andrews, have developed an innovative way to monitor the reaction of living bacteria to antibiotics using lasers and sound. This new...

A collaboration of Friends: Artists and Scientists on a learning Journey Dr Samantha Pitt is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Medicine here at the University of St Andrews and member of the CoB. Samantha investigates the molecular mechanisms of heart failure and...

It sounds like science fiction – but lasers beating to the rhythm of a live heart is exactly what researchers at the University of St Andrews have developed to improve the understanding of heart failure and to help develop more effective treatments.
The research, published in Nature Photonics today (Doi: 10.1038/s41566-020-0631-z) comes in the year in which the laser marks 60 years since it’s invention

The Laboratory for Biophysics and Biomolecular Dynamics incollaboration with Prof. R. Hay and Dr. Emma Branigan at Dundee University, demonstrates using smFRET that ubiquitin transfer by RING E3 ligases occurs from a close conformation of the E2~Ub complex. The work has just been published in Nature Communications volume 11, Article number: 2846 (2020)