Innovation 3155: New optics shatter the diffraction barrier, illuminating life within us, 2013. sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/350693/description/View_to_a_cell “Imagine if your best knowledge of human anatomy came from viewing the body through binoculars from a mile away. You might make out the shape of a hand, but knuckles and fingernails would elude you. Experiments could tell you there’s a pumping heart inside, but to see that heart with any clarity you would have to fix it in formaldehyde or liquid nitrogen, blast it with electrons and add dyes to impart contrast. For a long time, that’s what it’s been like for biologists trying to observe cells.” … “That’s all changed in the last few decades. Scientists have developed a suite of new optical techniques that circumvent the diffraction barrier and show us a cell’s full guts and glory. With new fluorescent tags that light up structures in the dense darkness inside a cell these new optical approaches produce detailed images of what was once invisible. In the pages that follow, some of the most striking images are highlighted, all from animal cells that scientists use to understand basic cellular processes and disease.”
Posted on: Sun, 16 Jun 2013 14:20:59 +0000
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