Scientist

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ESRF,
71, avenue des Martyrs
38000 Grenoble Cedex 9 - France
Tel : +33 (0)47688 2486
email : guillaume.gotthard@esrf.fr

 

I recently joined the Structural Biology group of the ESRF. My postdoctoral work is focused on the study of photo-bleaching mechanisms in fluorescent proteins (FPs) using Cerulean, a cyan FP variant derived from Aequorea victoria GFP, as study case. Indeed, in a similar way as other FPs, Cerulean suffers from irreversible and reversible photo-bleaching, that is the permanent or temporary loss of its fluorescence properties upon over-exposure to light, which may lead to artefacts in data analysis. Using the complementarity of X-ray crystallography and spectroscopy techniques, these works aim at deciphering the various photo-bleaching mechanisms, in particular those likely to occur under the live cell imaging microscope.

I am also involved in the technical development and the user support of the in crystallo Optical Spectroscopy (icOS) facility at the ESRF (ID29s-Cryobench). This platform allows the scientific community to perform online as well as offline spectroscopy experiments on protein crystals to better describe these macromolecular systems.