STORM delivers cellular view

A new type of microscopy invented by Xiaowei Zhuang and colleagues at

and the

delivers spatial resolution more than 10 times better than that of conventional optical microscopes. The development is said to bring scientists close to the first ultra-resolution, real-time imaging of living biomolecules and cells.

The new technique can currently resolve objects as small as 20 nanometres, a resolution Zhuang said could be pushed - with further improvements - to molecular scale.

Zhuang, along with Michael J. Rust and Mark Bates at Harvard, describe stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (STORM), in the August 9 online edition of the journal Nature Methods.

‘We believe this technique has the potential to transform molecular and cellular imaging in biology,’ says Zhuang, an HHMI investigator and professor of chemistry and chemical biology in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. ‘High-resolution bio-imaging is now accomplished using electron microscopy, which requires a 'dead' sample. The scientific community has long hoped for a technique offering STORM's attributes: touchless, gentle, real-time imaging of live biological samples at the molecular scale.’