News Report / Profile
José Rino - Bioimaging Unit
In science a picture may be worth much more than a thousand words. Perhaps due to this microscopy has always been a strong ally in
research in the Institute of Molecular Medicine (IMM). Nowadays the IMM research teams that do not apply it to the pressing issues of cell and development biology, neurosciences, immunology or infection are the exception.
The IMM Bioimaging Unit was created in 2008 as the natural culmination of the institute’s commitment to supporting and developing the use of microscopy not only by IMM researchers, but also by the whole Portuguese and International scientific community.
The existing equipment, which is the result of major investment and is essential to the IMM’s scientific competitiveness, is technologically advanced and of the highest quality. An example of this is the laser scanning confocal microscopy systems through which it is possible to visualise and study the behaviour of fluorescent proteins inside cells or living organisms for several hours and in physiological conditions.
José Rino, 32, is responsible for the Bioimaging Unit. He has a first degree in Technological Physical Engineering from the Lisbon Higher Technical Institute, and is a PhD in Biophysics from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon. Microscopy is one of his main interests, as well as the study of molecular mobility and interactions between proteins in the cell environment. We found him in the IMM; ready, as always, to chat about his work and about the unit.
1 – How come we can find a young physicist running a service unit in a biomedical research institute?
Well, I suppose that the answer includes the fact that I am no longer a “physicist”, but a “biophysicist”. That is, for biologists I’m a physicist who feels very at home in the fields of biology, but for physicists I am a biologist who thinks in terms of mathematical models and equations. So, I’m a hybrid. But it makes sense for there to be hybrids in biomedical research. At a time when this is increasingly a multidisciplinary activity and concepts like Systems Biology, Biophotonics and Nanotechnology come from the frontline of research, it is inevitable for there to be the need to find physicists, engineers and mathematicians alongside biologists, biochemists and doctors. It is a very interesting and positive sign of the times we are in.
2 – Is your background in biophysics an essential basis for taking on the responsibility you have as the director of the Bioimaging Unit?
Yes. Without any doubt. My training in biophysics was always closely linked to microscopy, which is an enormous advantage for the functions I have to carry out. The component of physical engineering is obviously essential for a more technical approach, not only of the maintenance of systems, but also for the development of new applications and technological solutions. But what is also essential is the “bio” component that allows dialogue, the efficient perception of the different questions which each unit wishes to answer. I think that this is perhaps the most important factor; to guarantee that the technological know how is being applied in the correct way. Multidisciplinarity only works if we all speak the same language, and in that sense my training ended up making me made me bilingual.
3 – What exactly is the Bioimaging Unit?
It is the IMM microscopy unit, a support structure for all research carried out with microscopy, and which is also a research unit into microscopy itself. The unit is responsible for the managing of the institute’s microscopy equipment, for the advanced training of users, for support in carrying out experiments and planning projects and also for the development and dissemination of advanced microscopy techniques. It is still a young unit, and for this reason the team is still small. Besides myself there are eight researchers belonging to other IMM units who provide help to this unit because they are advanced users of different microscopes.
4 - What is the importance of a service like this for the IMM?
It is extremely important. I would even say that the existence of a microscopy unit like this is crucial for the scientific advancement of the IMM’s research units, which are units with somewhat ambitious research programmes. The advanced microscopy techniques we have today and those that we expect to have in the near future are fundamental and indispensable tools for biomedical research. However, they are tools that are increasingly specialized and complex, requiring specific training, dedicated teams, know how and capacity for technological innovation. It is that critical mass, that capacity for access to technology inside the institute and support in using the tools that are the state of the art in microscopy that make the bioimaging unit so important for the IMM.
5 – The unit has cutting edge devices that represent great investment on the part of the institute. What is the instrument with the greatest potential? And what is the one that is most often requested by the researchers?
Without any doubt the equipment that represents the highest investment are the laser scanning confocal microscopes. The unit has three at the moment, and the most requested one is the confocal microscope fitted with five lasers, a temperature control incubator and CO2, therefore optimised for experiments with living cells and organisms. It is used for about 250 hours a month, which even for the manufacturer seems to be a record use. Yet I would say the tool with the most potential is a completely motorized fluorescence microscope we are implementing in collaboration with the Institute of Systems and Robotics at the Higher Technical Institute, a remote control system and another one with an “intelligent” image acquisition. We hope to be able to transform it into a robot-microscope capable of deciding for itself the best strategy to take for acquiring images of a cell or a cell parasite in motion.
6 – How can the bioimaging unit serve the scientific community outside the IMM?
The bioimaging unit may provide the outside scientific community with the same services it provides to the IMM units. That is, advanced training through microscopy courses or individual training, dissemination of knowledge, support in carrying out experiments, etc.
7 – And has that happened?
Yes, indeed. Our microscopes have been used on an average of eight hours per month by units outside the IMM, and several collaborations have been established and training given to other institutes.
8 – How did your interest in microscopy come about? Is there anyone who was determining in your career?
Yes, several people were determining in my career or helped me to follow this path I chose. At a certain moment it was rather clear to me that I wanted to do research in biology with the tools of physics. That course is in some way easier. Nowadays, for example, there is a Biomedical Engineering course shared between the Technical University and the FMUL, but when I was at the end of my degree, precisely at the technical institute, there was only one course in biophysics. It was thanks to the chair of that subject, Professor Eduardo Ducla Soares, that my transition into biophysics took place in a natural manner, definitively leaving solid state physics behind as a career option. Microscopy appeared a short time later, now as a PhD student in a research unit that would become the IMM Cell Biology Unit, headed by Professor Maria do Carmo Fonseca. That was without doubt a decisive moment, when I chose to be a PhD student in a cell biology unit, and it was with Professor Carmo Fonseca that I had my first introduction to a confocal microscope, a microscope that still exists in the IMM.
9 – What are the main aims of the research projects you are carrying out at the moment?
At the moment I am participating in several research projects for different units of the IMM. With the Cell Biology unit, for example, I am carrying out the project that takes up most of my time and which consists of understanding how hundreds of different proteins inside a cell are organised into complex and dynamic structures, in macreomolecular machines the function of which is to create a messaging RNA in the correct manner. I am trying to understand how these macromolecular complexes, connected to the transition and the to processing of RNAs, function inside the cell nucleus, and to do this I am using advanced techniques of confocal microscopy to visualise the dynamic and interactions of these proteins inside living cells, and mathematical modulation in order to extract numbers, to measure times associated to different steps and to understand working mechanisms.
10 – Is advancement in scientific knowledge in the area of biomedicine dependent upon the technological advancement of microscopy equipment? Up to what point might there be a parallelism between these two areas?
Yes, indeed. Advancement of knowledge in biomedicine is very dependent on the technological advancement of microscopes, but the opposite is also true. It is often the scientific question, the reason to answer a particular question that is the motivation for the development of microscopes or given techniques of microscopy as tools for answering that question. Although in other fields it may not be like this, and I even think that most of the technological contributions that have provoked the greatest scientific advances in the area of biomedicine have traditionally been discovered by chance, or in another context, that isn’t the case of microscopy. Microscopy has always been developed, from the beginning, with a very specific aim of looking at microscopic life, at cells and at what exists inside them. Deep down, microscopy was invented by biologists. Or, rather, by biophysicists.
![José Rino](http://news.medicina.ulisboa.pt/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/image001(1).jpg)
José Rino
Cheila Almeida
Marta Agostinho (marta-elisa@fm.ul.pt)
Communication and Training Unit
Institute of Molecular Medicine
http://www.imm.ul.pt
research in the Institute of Molecular Medicine (IMM). Nowadays the IMM research teams that do not apply it to the pressing issues of cell and development biology, neurosciences, immunology or infection are the exception.
The IMM Bioimaging Unit was created in 2008 as the natural culmination of the institute’s commitment to supporting and developing the use of microscopy not only by IMM researchers, but also by the whole Portuguese and International scientific community.
The existing equipment, which is the result of major investment and is essential to the IMM’s scientific competitiveness, is technologically advanced and of the highest quality. An example of this is the laser scanning confocal microscopy systems through which it is possible to visualise and study the behaviour of fluorescent proteins inside cells or living organisms for several hours and in physiological conditions.
José Rino, 32, is responsible for the Bioimaging Unit. He has a first degree in Technological Physical Engineering from the Lisbon Higher Technical Institute, and is a PhD in Biophysics from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon. Microscopy is one of his main interests, as well as the study of molecular mobility and interactions between proteins in the cell environment. We found him in the IMM; ready, as always, to chat about his work and about the unit.
1 – How come we can find a young physicist running a service unit in a biomedical research institute?
Well, I suppose that the answer includes the fact that I am no longer a “physicist”, but a “biophysicist”. That is, for biologists I’m a physicist who feels very at home in the fields of biology, but for physicists I am a biologist who thinks in terms of mathematical models and equations. So, I’m a hybrid. But it makes sense for there to be hybrids in biomedical research. At a time when this is increasingly a multidisciplinary activity and concepts like Systems Biology, Biophotonics and Nanotechnology come from the frontline of research, it is inevitable for there to be the need to find physicists, engineers and mathematicians alongside biologists, biochemists and doctors. It is a very interesting and positive sign of the times we are in.
2 – Is your background in biophysics an essential basis for taking on the responsibility you have as the director of the Bioimaging Unit?
Yes. Without any doubt. My training in biophysics was always closely linked to microscopy, which is an enormous advantage for the functions I have to carry out. The component of physical engineering is obviously essential for a more technical approach, not only of the maintenance of systems, but also for the development of new applications and technological solutions. But what is also essential is the “bio” component that allows dialogue, the efficient perception of the different questions which each unit wishes to answer. I think that this is perhaps the most important factor; to guarantee that the technological know how is being applied in the correct way. Multidisciplinarity only works if we all speak the same language, and in that sense my training ended up making me made me bilingual.
3 – What exactly is the Bioimaging Unit?
It is the IMM microscopy unit, a support structure for all research carried out with microscopy, and which is also a research unit into microscopy itself. The unit is responsible for the managing of the institute’s microscopy equipment, for the advanced training of users, for support in carrying out experiments and planning projects and also for the development and dissemination of advanced microscopy techniques. It is still a young unit, and for this reason the team is still small. Besides myself there are eight researchers belonging to other IMM units who provide help to this unit because they are advanced users of different microscopes.
4 - What is the importance of a service like this for the IMM?
It is extremely important. I would even say that the existence of a microscopy unit like this is crucial for the scientific advancement of the IMM’s research units, which are units with somewhat ambitious research programmes. The advanced microscopy techniques we have today and those that we expect to have in the near future are fundamental and indispensable tools for biomedical research. However, they are tools that are increasingly specialized and complex, requiring specific training, dedicated teams, know how and capacity for technological innovation. It is that critical mass, that capacity for access to technology inside the institute and support in using the tools that are the state of the art in microscopy that make the bioimaging unit so important for the IMM.
5 – The unit has cutting edge devices that represent great investment on the part of the institute. What is the instrument with the greatest potential? And what is the one that is most often requested by the researchers?
Without any doubt the equipment that represents the highest investment are the laser scanning confocal microscopes. The unit has three at the moment, and the most requested one is the confocal microscope fitted with five lasers, a temperature control incubator and CO2, therefore optimised for experiments with living cells and organisms. It is used for about 250 hours a month, which even for the manufacturer seems to be a record use. Yet I would say the tool with the most potential is a completely motorized fluorescence microscope we are implementing in collaboration with the Institute of Systems and Robotics at the Higher Technical Institute, a remote control system and another one with an “intelligent” image acquisition. We hope to be able to transform it into a robot-microscope capable of deciding for itself the best strategy to take for acquiring images of a cell or a cell parasite in motion.
6 – How can the bioimaging unit serve the scientific community outside the IMM?
The bioimaging unit may provide the outside scientific community with the same services it provides to the IMM units. That is, advanced training through microscopy courses or individual training, dissemination of knowledge, support in carrying out experiments, etc.
7 – And has that happened?
Yes, indeed. Our microscopes have been used on an average of eight hours per month by units outside the IMM, and several collaborations have been established and training given to other institutes.
8 – How did your interest in microscopy come about? Is there anyone who was determining in your career?
Yes, several people were determining in my career or helped me to follow this path I chose. At a certain moment it was rather clear to me that I wanted to do research in biology with the tools of physics. That course is in some way easier. Nowadays, for example, there is a Biomedical Engineering course shared between the Technical University and the FMUL, but when I was at the end of my degree, precisely at the technical institute, there was only one course in biophysics. It was thanks to the chair of that subject, Professor Eduardo Ducla Soares, that my transition into biophysics took place in a natural manner, definitively leaving solid state physics behind as a career option. Microscopy appeared a short time later, now as a PhD student in a research unit that would become the IMM Cell Biology Unit, headed by Professor Maria do Carmo Fonseca. That was without doubt a decisive moment, when I chose to be a PhD student in a cell biology unit, and it was with Professor Carmo Fonseca that I had my first introduction to a confocal microscope, a microscope that still exists in the IMM.
9 – What are the main aims of the research projects you are carrying out at the moment?
At the moment I am participating in several research projects for different units of the IMM. With the Cell Biology unit, for example, I am carrying out the project that takes up most of my time and which consists of understanding how hundreds of different proteins inside a cell are organised into complex and dynamic structures, in macreomolecular machines the function of which is to create a messaging RNA in the correct manner. I am trying to understand how these macromolecular complexes, connected to the transition and the to processing of RNAs, function inside the cell nucleus, and to do this I am using advanced techniques of confocal microscopy to visualise the dynamic and interactions of these proteins inside living cells, and mathematical modulation in order to extract numbers, to measure times associated to different steps and to understand working mechanisms.
10 – Is advancement in scientific knowledge in the area of biomedicine dependent upon the technological advancement of microscopy equipment? Up to what point might there be a parallelism between these two areas?
Yes, indeed. Advancement of knowledge in biomedicine is very dependent on the technological advancement of microscopes, but the opposite is also true. It is often the scientific question, the reason to answer a particular question that is the motivation for the development of microscopes or given techniques of microscopy as tools for answering that question. Although in other fields it may not be like this, and I even think that most of the technological contributions that have provoked the greatest scientific advances in the area of biomedicine have traditionally been discovered by chance, or in another context, that isn’t the case of microscopy. Microscopy has always been developed, from the beginning, with a very specific aim of looking at microscopic life, at cells and at what exists inside them. Deep down, microscopy was invented by biologists. Or, rather, by biophysicists.
![José Rino](http://news.medicina.ulisboa.pt/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/image001(1).jpg)
José Rino
Cheila Almeida
Marta Agostinho (marta-elisa@fm.ul.pt)
Communication and Training Unit
Institute of Molecular Medicine
http://www.imm.ul.pt
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