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Optical microscopy gets down to angstroms

Nature Biotechnology volume 41, pages 473–474 (2023)Cite this article

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Super-resolution microscopy at ångström precision could pave the way to optical structural biology in cells.

The new technique is based on stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy3, which uses a donut-shaped laser beam focus to induce stimulated emission of fluorophores lying in the periphery of a Gaussian excitation spot. Only molecules situated in the center of the excitation region emit fluorescence, leading to the resolution improvement. The higher the STED beam intensity, the smaller the effective point spread function (ePSF) and the better the spatial resolution.

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Fig. 1: MINSTED microscopy in context.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Laboratory of Experimental Biophysics, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Giorgio Tortarolo & Suliana Manley

Authors
  1. Giorgio Tortarolo
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  2. Suliana Manley
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Correspondence to Suliana Manley.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Tortarolo, G., Manley, S. Optical microscopy gets down to angstroms. Nat Biotechnol 41, 473–474 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-022-01544-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-022-01544-3

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