Editor's Summary
2 March 2006
Top tips
Atomic force microscopy, first developed 20 years ago, uses a sharp tip at the end of a flexible cantilever beam to probe the topography of surfaces at the atomic scale. Use of AFM on large biological molecules and soft tissue is limited by the tip's tendency to disturb the things it probes. But that may change with the emergence of frequency modulation AFM, in which the sample tip is probed via its effects on the oscillating frequency of the cantilever. The microscope tip needn't touch the sample at all, and biologists could soon be beating a path to their local AFM lab, sample in hand.
Editorial: Gradual force
A delicate probe, twenty years old this week, has transformed our understanding of the nanoscale.
doi:10.1038/440002a
News Feature: Molecular microscopy: Focus on the living
Atomic force microscopes have revolutionized the study of materials, but probing watery biological systems has proved more difficult. Jenny Hogan asks whether a fix is at hand.
doi:10.1038/440014a
