Virgile ADAM

I worked in the group of Pr. Johan Hofkens (Laboratory of Photochemistry and Spectroscopy). My research interests were the engineering of new type of photoactivatable fluorescent proteins (PAFPs), single-molecule spectroscopy and super-resolution fluorescence

As an extension of my PhD thesis, I worked as a research engineer for the French Atomic Energy Commission during four months. During this contract, I worked in the field of PAFPs and especially their photobleaching process.

I worked at the ESRF as a PhD student in the macromolecular crystallography group, under the supervision of Dr. Dominique Bourgeois and Dr. Sean McSweeney.
My rearch focussed on the green-to-red photoconvertible fluorescent proteins and reversibly switchable fluorescent proteins EosFP, Dendra2 and IrisFP. These PAFPs started to demonstrate their a great interest for the very newly born techniques of fluorescence high-resolution imaging.

The first year of my PhD thesis was funded by the the Land Baden-Württemberg, Germany. I worked under the supervision of Pr. Uli Nienhaus at characterizing new variants of photoactivatable fluorescent proteins (PAFPs) that are found in corals and anemonaes and represent a great interest for dynamic microscopy studies. My aim was to understand the spectroscopic, quantum and structural phenomena that occur when such fluorescent biomarkers are illuminated and phototransformed.

In collaboration with the IBS and the CEA in Grenoble, I worked on solving the crystal structures and characterizing spectroscopic properties of several enzymes: the superoxide reductase (SOR) from Desulfoarculus baarsii, the thymidilate monophosphate kinase (TMPK) from Mycobacterium tuberculosis, a FMN-monooxygenase (ActVA-ORF5) from Streptomyces coelicolor as well as several photoactivatable caged compounds