Interview with Dr. Yasushi Okada

Yasushi Okada, team leader at Riken Quantitative Biology Center in Osaka, Japan, investigates vesicular transport mechanisms in neuronal cells. As the size of transported vesicles is below 100 nm and the diameter of microtubules is about 25 nm, he uses super-resolution techniques to study the sophisticated machinery of neuronal transport. STED technology already helped him to understand how vesicles can move between microtubules although the interval between several microtubules is smaller than the diameter of the vesicles. "With super-resolution light imaging we can see that the microtubules move away, so that the vesicles go between the microtubules. So that's a new insight." For his studies he uses all available super-resolution strategies like structured illumination, GSDIM and STED. "But for live imaging, especially at a resolution below 100 nm, STED is the only choice."