Estelle Lebègue will receive funding from Region Pays de la Loire for her SEEMI (Single-Entity Electrochemistry coupled to Microscopy Imaging) project thanks to the Rising Stars program, which aims to serve as a springboard to strengthen applications for European applications (ERC).
In line with her theme of single-entity electrochemistry, Estelle would like to combine this technique with optical microscopy to observe the behavior of electroactive bacteria and redox liposomes at a polarized ultramicroelectrode. The aim is to set up an electrochemical platform suitable for microscopic monitoring with the instruments already available in the laboratory and to initiate new collaborations to achieve the objectives of the SEEMI project. This funding should enable the recruitment of a 12-month postdoctoral fellow to work full-time on the project.
SEEMI aims to combine optical microscopy with single-entity electrochemistry, based on our expertise and preliminary results obtained in these two fields. The first objective is to combine single impacts of soft entities (bacteria and liposomes) with microscopy imaging onto the surface of the ultramicroelectrode. The next objective is to study the permeability of the lipid membrane and the opening mechanism of the lipid bilayer of these soft entities at the single-entity scale, such as a Gram-negative bacterium and a redox liposome, by varying the polarization potential of the ultramicroelectrode. The ultimate challenge of the SEEMI project is to design a nanoelectrode that will be polarized to detect the redox proteins of the outer membrane of a single electroactive bacterium and the electroactive content of a nanometric redox liposome adsorbed onto the surface of the ultramicroelectrode.
The main objective of SEEMI is to design an Electrochemistry-Microscopy platform to study single soft entities such as bacteria and liposomes in real time, in particular the electron transfer of membrane redox proteins and the release of the redox content of liposomes.
SEEMI will provide fundamental knowledge about the redox activity of a single soft entity, namely redox liposomes and electroactive bacteria, as well as a significant improvement in instrumentation for imaging a single entity adsorbed onto a polarized ultramicroelectrode surface. In addition, SEEMI will enable to understand the effect of the polarized surface on the redox activity of the single entity through real-time analysis (operando measurements). The development of an effective combined electrochemistry-microscopy platform, adapted to the study of electroactive bacteria and redox liposomes, will greatly improve our understanding of electron transfer in these single entities at the intracellular level.