Microscope

Devising Nano Vision for an Optical Microscope

Contrary to conventional wisdom, technology’s advance into the vanishingly small realm of molecules and atoms may not be out of sight for the venerable optical microscope, after all. In fact, research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) suggests that a hybrid version of the optical microscope might be able to image and measure features smaller than 10 nanometers—a tiny fr...

Microscopes at microscopic size

Traditionally if scientists wanted to look at something small they would put a sample under a microscope but now researchers have managed to shrink the microscope itself to the size of a single human cell. An interdisciplinary research team, funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Science Research Council (BBSRC) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) have developed...

New, unique microscope for nanotech

UC Davis researchers in nanotechnology, chemistry and biology now have access to one of the most advanced microscopes of its type in the world. The new Spectral Imaging Facility, opened this fall, is a combination of an atomic force microscope and a laser scanning confocal microscope, the first commercial machine of its kind. The atomic force microscope was built by Asylum Research of Sant...

High-resolution light microscope reveals the fundamental mechanisms of nerve communication

In a simultaneous publication (Science Express, 13th April 2006), STED microscopy revealed the spatial distribution of the bruchpilot protein and aided neurobiologists from the European Neuroscience Institute and the University of Würzburgin understanding the protein's central role in the formation of active synaptic zones. STED microscopy radically distinguishes itself from conventional farfield...

New light microscope sharpens scientists' focus

A new light microscope so powerful that it allows scientists peering inside cells to discern the precise location of nearly each individual protein they are studying has been developed and successfully demonstrated by scientists at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Farm Research Campus in collaboration with researchers at the National Institutes of Health and Florida State University....

Nanoscale microscope sheds first light on gene repair

Proteins called H2AX act as "first aid" to DNA, among other roles. For the first time, scientists using the world's most powerful light microscope (the only one of its kind in the Americas) have seen how H2AX is distributed in the cell nucleus: in clusters, directing the first aid/repair after DNA injuries to the region where it is really needed. Many biological processes lie out of t...