One of the ultimate challenges in biology is to understand the relationship between the structure, function and dynamics of biomolecules in their natural environment: the living cell. Although modern molecular biology has made enormous progress in identifying different cell components, observing molecular processes in living cells is still a major goal. Key multimolecular interactions that dictate cell functionality occur at the nanometre scale, a size regime not accessible by classical optical techniques owing to the diffraction limit of light. Advances in the fields of molecular and cell biology are strongly coupled to the implementation of photonic tools that allow highly-sensitive measurements in living cells at high molecular concentrations and at the nanometre scale.

The goal of NANO-VISTA is to exploit novel concepts of photonic antennas to develop a new generation of bionanophotonic tools for ultrasensitive detection, nanoimaging and nanospectroscopy of biomolecules, both in-vitro and in living cells.

The NANO-VISTA project, started on November 2011 is funded by the European Commission’s 7th research Framework programme.