Jackson Laboratory announces international microscope technology breakthrough

Date: May 11, 2008

Bar Harbor, Maine -- Astonishing magnification and resolution is possible through techniques such as electron and X-ray microscopes. And yet light microscopy, with its less powerful spatial resolution, is still the most widely used biological imaging technique today, in part because it can provide three-dimensional images of living cells. Enter Joerg Bewersdorf and his group at The Jackson Laboratory and a new light microscopy technique, called "biplane."

Until now, the limits in resolution have concealed details of sub-cellular structures. Biplane brings a 100- to 1,000-fold smaller resolvable volume than conventional 3D microscopy. Officially named BP FPALM (for biplane fluorescence photoactivation localization microscopy), the biplane technique uses an existing fluorescent probe microscopy technique and uses simultaneous detection on two planes to provide unprecedented 3D resolution, on the order of 30 nanometers (nm) laterally and 75 nm axially. (A nanometer is one-millionth of a millimeter.)

The complex-sounding system is in fact a compact, robust design that uses only one camera, making it relatively straightforward to implement. It is compatible with live cell imaging as well as tissue sections of up to several micrometers thick. The end result is the ability to investigate a large variety of biological structures in 3D at previously unheard of resolution and clarity.

The Jackson Laboratory is a nonprofit biomedical research institution and National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center based in Bar Harbor, Maine. Its mission is to discover the genetic basis for preventing, treating and curing human diseases, and to enable research and education for the global biomedical community.

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Bewersdorf et al.: Three-dimensional sub-100 nm resolution fluorescence microscopy of thick samples. Nature Methods, advance online publication 5/11/08.

Background on this story is available in a recent Jackson Laboratory feature article.

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