A brand-new fluorescence microscopy method has been created by researchers to significantly improve the resolution that can be obtained when imaging intracellular structures. The method uses the distortions a specimen produces to identify specific molecules and deduce the location of intracellular structures. The method may be especially helpful in researching brain conditions like Alzheimer’s.
Developing remedies requires a thorough understanding of the intricate structural makeup of disease-causing cells. However, at the intracellular level, the distortion brought on by light emitted by molecules within the specimen has made it challenging to observe small structures using fluorescence microscopy precisely.
To greatly increase resolution, researchers have now turned this situation on its head and are using the distortion caused by molecules within the specimen to plot their location. The wavefront distortions caused by the specimen, whether a cell or a tissue, are measured directly from the signals produced by single molecules, which are small light sources attached to the relevant cellular structures. They can identify the locations of individual molecules with extreme precision and accuracy by understanding the distortion produced.
Researchers have obtained thousands to millions of coordinates of individual molecules within a cell or tissue volume to disclose the nanoscale architectures of specimen constituents.
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