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[Perspective] Flipping nanoscopy on its head

ScienceNOW - Fetched: February 9th, 2017, 3:00pm UTC

About the smallest object we can see with the naked eye is our own hair. With a magnifying glass, we can see about 10 times better, and light microscopy, until relatively recently, could resolve features about 300 times thinner than human hair (∼250 nm). Recent developments in fluorescence “nanoscopy” made it possible to routinely image cellular structures at 20- to 30-nm resolution (1), but a gap remained at the molecular scale: Most proteins are smaller than 5 nm across. On page 606 of this issue, Balzarotti et al. (2) report a new concept in nanoscopy, termed MINFLUX, that achieves the true molecular resolution (2 to 3 nm) and dramatically reduces the number of photons required by “flipping” a common wisdom in nanoscopy on its head. Authors: Jie Xiao, Taekjip Ha

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