Heidi de Wit: Opening a new world
De Wit knows her position: ‘For the Neuroscience Campus research groups, we will be a last stop after they have performed all their other experiments. But let me tell you: electron microscopy opens a world you cannot see in any other way.’
‘For quite some time, little money was available for electron microscopy at the VU. All the attention went to modern, fast techniques, pushing the old-fashioned electron microscope (EM) to the background. But recently, the technique came back into the picture and I was attracted to bringing it back to life,’ says Heidi de Wit, postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Functional Genomics at the CNCR. ‘Now we hope to cross borders and let more people enjoy the possibilities of electron microscopy.’
The particular added value of the technique is the ability to zoom in a lot further than is possible with any other technique. The electron microscopy facility was invited to join the Neuroscience Campus because there is an enormous demand for the technique, which is rather difficult to master. De Wit: ‘It is not something you just practise alongside your other experiments, since it takes about a month before you get some results. It took me more than a year to get a grip on the technique.’
Heidi de Wit predominantly works on the molecular and cellular mechanisms of membrane transport inside the cell. She uses immunogold labelling to identify the position of proteins on cell organelles. When these proteins and organelles are not transported correctly, this will be revealed by electron microscopy. Her own research is focused on the mechanism by which secretory vesicles reach the synapse. For this, she studies mutants that show a defect in the transport of synaptic vesicles to the synapse. Certain mutants are also linked to diseases like schizophrenia and epilepsy, says De Wit. Visualising this gives additional insight into the function of these disease proteins, and is complementary to other techniques used in the Neuroscience Campus.
In the coming years, De Wit will fulfil a facilitating role at the Neuroscience Campus, although she does not want her own research to suffer from her new responsibilities. ‘We have already started searching for new technicians to help us: the more hands we have, the more we will be able to answer to all the demands of the Neuroscience Campus research groups.’
3D pictures of neurons
Within five years, a new EM facility on the VU campus will be built at the ground floor of the new research tower of VUmc. Several research departments of VUmc will participate in this facility: Molecular Cell Biology & Immunology, Anatomy & Neurosciences, Pathology and ACTA (the academic dental centre of VUmc and AMC).
'In the near future, we will buy a new digital camera to increase the quality of the EM-pictures. And in the coming years, we want to purchase a new electron microscope to generate three-dimensional pictures of neurons, which is very unique in the Netherlands.’
De Wit’s ambition is to offer excellent EM expertise and infrastructure to all researchers on the VU neuroscience campus. Several projects are already underway and new ones will start in the near future. For example, researchers in the group of professor Marjo van der Knaap in the Department of Child Neurology are interested to localise genes causing White Matter Disorders. ‘We’ll try to sort that out using immuno-electron microscopy.’
