High-res microscope

Biomedical engineers in the US have developed a microscope that can image proteins inside live cells with double the resolution of fluorescence microscopy using structured illumination.

The microscope was developed by an academic team from the University of Georgia in Athens (UGA) and the University of California in San Francisco (UCSF).

The development could help scientists learn more about cell behaviour and study mechanisms important for human disease.

The fluorescence microscope has allowed a generation of scientists to study the properties of proteins inside cells. Yet as human capacity for discovery has made its way down to the nanoscale, fluorescence microscopy has struggled to keep up.

The laws of physics have limited the resolution of fluorescence microscopy, whereby a fluorescent marker is used to distinguish specific proteins, to about 200nm. At this resolution significant detail is lost about the activity within a cell.

‘Our understanding of what is going on inside cells and our ability to manipulate them has advanced so much that it has become more and more important to see them at a better resolution,’ said Peter Kner, a University of Georgia biomedical engineer who helped build the new microscope.