Helenius, Jonne, Dr.

Research interests

As a member of the the biophysics group I am involved i several areas of research. The group is centered around the use of atomic force microscopy (AFM) in the study of biological processes. Areas of emphasis include high-resolution AFM imaging of membrane proteins, force induced protein unfolding, single cell adhesion strength and cell morphology changes.

My current focus is the mechanism and physics of cell rounding. Cell rounding is an active process that involves both structural elements, e.g. cortex and plasma-membrane, and physicochemical regulation, e.g. osmotic pressure. In the process of cell rounding force is generated against external objects. Therefore, combinations of various light microscopy techniques with force measurement are ideally suited to study many aspects of cell rounding. The task is to implement the full repertory of fluorescent techniques in combination with AFM.

Also important to me is the use of AFM to study cell adhesion at the single cell level. Here, the dual function microscopes, that are capable of simultaneously performing AFM and light microscopy, allow questions, that are not approachable by other techniques, to be addresses.

Short CV

2010 – PostDoc, Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering, ETH Zürich
2007 – 2010 PostDoc, Biotechnological Center TU Dresden, Dresden
2003 – 2006 Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden
1999 – 2003 PhD, Microbiology, ETH Zürich
1996 – 1999 Research Associate, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Boston
1993 – 1995 M.Sc., Bioengineering, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
1989 – 1993 B.S., Mechanical engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester

Publications

For a list of publications, click here.