How do time and motion fit in with these techniques? I'm dimly aware that the molecular machinery inside cells moves pretty fast, and that a lot of things move around randomly. In normal size ranges that kind of thing would naturally make it hard to get a clear picture. Do these imaging techniques require that stuff be frozen or specially prepared? Or do the techniques themselves work so fast that they can get a snapshot regardless?
There is also one widespread approach that isn't mentioned in the article: expansion microscopy. Expansion takes the scifi-sounding approach of: what if you could make your sample physically bigger? See the Wikipedia page for more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expansion_microscopy
1. Stephen Hell has been theorizing about how to do super-res microscopy since the mid-90s, so the article saying it was sci-fi "20 years ago" is off by about 10 years.
2. Stephen Hell has recently given the world another new technique, MINFLUX, which seems to be his best gift to super-res researchers so far. :)
> Laboratory Ibrahim Cissé > Single Molecule and Super-Resolution imaging in live cells > We leverage expertise in Single-Molecule and Super-Resolution imaging in live cells to study collective behaviors (e.g., protein clustering) emerging from weak or transient biomolecular interactions in mammalian cells. We unveil, often for the first time, that these clusters exist in living cells, and we expand both on the imaging approaches and the cellular and molecular biology techniques to discover the biophysical mechanisms of action and their function in vivo.
Or for a quick layman's explanation, here's a YouTube video of him describing his work when he won a MacArthur Fellowship [1].
I'm grateful for HN for reminding me of him and giving me an excuse to look up his work a little more in-depth.
Thank you for saying that and helping me better understand what it means.
Zealotux•6mo ago
Jessibot•6mo ago