Researchers from the Universities of Göttingen and Oxford, in collaboration with the University Medical Center Göttingen (UMG), have developed a high-resolution fluorescence microscope that can capture even the tiniest cell structures. The new microscope boasts a resolution better than five nanometres (five billionths of a metre), roughly equivalent to the width of a hair split into 10,000 strands.
This breakthrough in microscopy technology is set to revolutionize our understanding of cellular processes. Many structures within cells are too small for conventional microscopes to produce clear images, but this new method uses “single-molecule localization microscopy” to switch on and off individual fluorescent molecules in a sample, determining their precise positions and modeling the entire structure from these positions.
The current process enables resolutions of around 10-20 nanometres, but Professor Jörg Enderlein’s research group at the University of Göttingen has now doubled this resolution with the help of a highly sensitive detector and special data analysis. This means that even the tiniest details of protein organization in the connecting area between two nerve cells can be precisely revealed.
According to Enderlein, “This newly developed technology is a milestone in the field of high-resolution microscopy. It not only offers resolutions in the single-digit nanometer range but is also particularly cost-effective and easy to use compared to other methods.” The scientists have also developed an open-source software package for data processing, making this type of microscopy available to a wide range of specialists in the future.
Reference: “Doubling the resolution of fluorescence-lifetime single-molecule localization microscopy with image scanning microscopy” by Niels Radmacher, Oleksii Nevskyi, José Ignacio Gallea, Jan Christoph Thiele, Ingo Gregor, Silvio O. Rizzoli and Jörg Enderlein, 2 August 2024, Nature Photonics. DOI: 10.1038/s41566-024-01481-4
Source: https://scitechdaily.com/peering-into-the-nanoworld-new-microscope-reveals-tiniest-cell-processes/