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News & Views |
Squeezed light improves sensitivity of microscopy technique
Vibrational signals from molecules can provide contrast in bioimaging techniques, but are difficult to detect. Light in a ‘squeezed’ quantum state has been used to reveal molecular vibrational signals previously obscured by noise.
- Eric O. Potma
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Article |
Quantum-enhanced nonlinear microscopy
A quantum microscope obtains signal-to-noise beyond the photodamage limits of conventional microscopy, revealing biological structures within cells that would not otherwise be resolved.
- Catxere A. Casacio
- , Lars S. Madsen
- & Warwick P. Bowen
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Research Highlight |
The secret origins of Van Leeuwenhoek’s famous microscopes
The father of microbiology surreptitiously relied on widely known formulae — including a protocol written by his arch-rival — when making lenses.
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Research Summary |
Actin mixes up mitochondria for inheritance
In cells that divide symmetrically, a meshwork of actin cables is shown to maintain the uniform distribution of mitochondria around the mitotic spindle. Actin clouds and comet tails are assembled dynamically to shuffle mitochondria locally and ensure the equal and random inheritance of these organelles by the two daughter cells.
- Andrew S. Moore
- & Erika L. F. Holzbaur
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Article |
Correlative operando microscopy of oxygen evolution electrocatalysts
Mapping the operational chemical, physical and electronic structure of an oxygen evolution electrocatalyst at the nanoscale links the properties of the material with the observed oxygen evolution activity.
- J. Tyler Mefford
- , Andrew R. Akbashev
- & William C. Chueh
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Article |
Coupling of activity, metabolism and behaviour across the Drosophila brain
Two-photon microscopy across the fly brain using sensors that permit simultaneous measurement of neural activity and metabolic flux reveals global and local coordination of neural activity and energy metabolism.
- Kevin Mann
- , Stephane Deny
- & Thomas R. Clandinin
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Article |
A single-molecule van der Waals compass
The orientation of a rotating para-xylene molecule in the nanochannel of a zeolite framework can be visualised by electron microscopy to determine the host–guest van der Waals interaction inside the channel.
- Boyuan Shen
- , Xiao Chen
- & Fei Wei
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News & Views |
Atomic structure of a glass imaged at last
The positions of all the atoms in a sample of a metallic glass have been measured experimentally — fulfilling a decades-old dream for glass scientists, and raising the prospect of fresh insight into the structures of disordered solids.
- Paul Voyles
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Article |
Determining the three-dimensional atomic structure of an amorphous solid
A method that achieves atomic-resolution tomographic imaging of an amorphous solid enables detailed quantitative characterization of the short- and medium-range order of the three-dimensional atomic arrangement.
- Yao Yang
- , Jihan Zhou
- & Jianwei Miao
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Technology Feature |
AI spots cell structures that humans can’t
Models can predict the location of cell structures from light-microscopy images alone, without the need for harmful fluorescence labelling.
- Amber Dance
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Technology Feature |
Seven technologies to watch in 2021
COVID considerations unsurprisingly dominate the tech developments that could have a big impact in the coming year.
- Esther Landhuis
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Technology Feature |
Sharper signals: how machine learning is cleaning up microscopy images
Computers trained to reduce the noise in micrographs can now tackle fresh data by themselves.
- Amber Dance
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Article |
Single-defect phonons imaged by electron microscopy
State-of-the-art electron energy-loss spectroscopy in a transmission electron microscope maps the detailed phonon spectra of single defects in silicon carbide
- Xingxu Yan
- , Chengyan Liu
- & Xiaoqing Pan
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Technology Feature |
Core curriculum: learning to manage a shared microscopy facility
High-tech tools are increasingly being consolidated into specialized centres. Running these technological wonderlands takes a unique blend of skills.
- Sandeep Ravindran
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News & Views |
Bacterial species singled out from a diverse crowd
Microscopy methods that reveal the spatial patterns of individual types of microbe are limited by the number of different species that can be monitored together. A new technique now provides progress on this front.
- Jen Nguyen
- & Carolina Tropini
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News Round-Up |
Unsustainable charcoal, COVID spreads on plane and antibody cocktails
The latest science news, in brief.
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News |
Microscopy illuminates charcoal’s sketchy origins
A large volume of charcoal sold in Europe comes from tropical forests and is often incorrectly labelled, raising questions about whether it was logged illegally.
- Aisling Irwin
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News |
‘It opens up a whole new universe’: Revolutionary microscopy technique sees individual atoms for first time
Cryo-electron microscopy breaks a key barrier that will allow the workings of proteins to be probed in unprecedented detail.
- Ewen Callaway
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Article |
Controlling free electrons with optical whispering-gallery modes
The coupling between light and relativistic free electrons is enhanced through phase matching of electrons with optical whispering-gallery modes in dielectric microspheres and through extended modal lifetimes.
- Ofer Kfir
- , Hugo Lourenço-Martins
- & Claus Ropers
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Article |
Coherent interaction between free electrons and a photonic cavity
The strong interaction of coherent free electrons with a photonic-crystal cavity enables the measurement of the lifetimes of the cavity modes and provides a technique for multidimensional near-field imaging and spectroscopy.
- Kangpeng Wang
- , Raphael Dahan
- & Ido Kaminer
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Article |
Short-range order and its impact on the CrCoNi medium-entropy alloy
Metal alloys consisting of three or more major elemental components show enhanced mechanical properties, which are now shown to be correlated with short-range order observed with electron microscopy.
- Ruopeng Zhang
- , Shiteng Zhao
- & Andrew M. Minor
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Article |
Engineering covalently bonded 2D layered materials by self-intercalation
The intercalation of native atoms into bilayer transition metal dichalcogenides during growth generates ultrathin, covalently bonded materials into which ferromagnetic ordering can be introduced.
- Xiaoxu Zhao
- , Peng Song
- & Kian Ping Loh
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Technology Feature |
Deep learning takes on tumours
Artificial-intelligence methods are moving into cancer research.
- Esther Landhuis
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Technology Feature |
Find a home for every imaging data set
Repositories let researchers store, share and access life‑science images — and maybe even extract new findings.
- Amber Dance
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News |
Revolutionary cryo-EM is taking over structural biology
The number of protein structures being determined by cryo-electron microscopy is growing at an explosive rate.
- Ewen Callaway
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Outlook |
The hunt for a healthy microbiome
Despite evidence of the gut microbiome’s role in human health, researchers are still working out what shapes the community of microbes.
- Michael Eisenstein
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Article |
Design and synthesis of multigrain nanocrystals via geometric misfit strain
Heteroepitaxy is used to precisely control the growth of Mn3O4 shells on the faces of a Co3O4 nanocube crystal, producing uniform grain boundary defects and highly ordered multigrain nanostructures.
- Myoung Hwan Oh
- , Min Gee Cho
- & Taeghwan Hyeon
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Article |
Atomic imaging of the edge structure and growth of a two-dimensional hexagonal ice
Real-space imaging of the edge structures and growth of a two-dimensional ice on a gold substrate is achieved using noncontact atomic-force microscopy with a carbon monoxide tip.
- Runze Ma
- , Duanyun Cao
- & Ying Jiang
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Technology Feature |
The microscope makers putting ever-larger biological samples under the spotlight
Microscopy has been a trade-off until now: the bigger the sample, the lower the resolution. But picking out cellular detail in mouse brains and more is becoming increasingly possible.
- Jeffrey M. Perkel
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Technology Feature |
Genetic light bulbs illuminate the brain
Genetically encoded voltage indicators change colour in real time when neurons transmit electrical information, offering unprecedented insight into neural activity.
- Jyoti Madhusoodanan
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Article |
Real-space charge-density imaging with sub-ångström resolution by four-dimensional electron microscopy
A real-space imaging technique that combines scanning transmission electron microscopy with an angle-resolved pixellated fast-electron detector is used to image the charge distribution in SrTiO3, BiFeO3 and the junction between them.
- Wenpei Gao
- , Christopher Addiego
- & Xiaoqing Pan
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News & Views |
A mechanism for touch
Piezo proteins mediate the sense of touch. A near-complete structure of one such protein has been obtained, and the mechanism for converting mechanical signals into electrical ones has been probed in another.
- Edwin W. McCleskey
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Article |
Force-induced conformational changes in PIEZO1
Cryo-electron microscopy and high-speed atomic force microscopy reveal that PIEZO1 can reversibly deform its shape towards a planar structure, which may explain how the PIEZO1 channel is gated in response to mechanical stimulation.
- Yi-Chih Lin
- , Yusong R. Guo
- & Simon Scheuring
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Letter |
Position and momentum mapping of vibrations in graphene nanostructures
Investigation of a free-standing graphene monolayer using a technique based on transmission electron microscopy allows identification of atomic vibrations characteristic of the bulk or the edge of the sample.
- Ryosuke Senga
- , Kazu Suenaga
- & Thomas Pichler
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Letter |
Cryo-EM structures of herpes simplex virus type 1 portal vertex and packaged genome
Cryo-electron microscopy structures of the herpesvirus capsid including the viral genome reveal ordered DNA structures and structural features of the capsid that suggest possible mechanisms for viral genome encapsidation.
- Yun-Tao Liu
- , Jonathan Jih
- & Z. Hong Zhou
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Research Highlight |
Imaging tweak reveals chemical bonds inside bulky molecules
An unconventional mode of operation allows atomic-force microscope to peer inside 3D shapes.
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Technology Feature |
A DIY approach to automating your lab
Do-it-yourself projects give researchers the equipment they need at bargain prices. But making your own technology requires commitment and time, and it is rarely easy.
- Mike May
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Letter |
Transcriptome-scale super-resolved imaging in tissues by RNA seqFISH+
seqFISH+, an evolution of sequential fluorescence in situ hybridization with super-resolution imaging capabilities, is used to image mRNAs of 10,000 genes in cultured cells and mouse brain slices, demonstrating the ability to generate spatial atlases and to perform discovery-driven studies in situ.
- Chee-Huat Linus Eng
- , Michael Lawson
- & Long Cai
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News Feature |
How secret conversations inside cells are transforming biology
Organelles — the cell’s workhorses — mingle far more than scientists ever appreciated.
- Elie Dolgin
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Technology Feature |
Technologies to watch in 2019
From higher-resolution imaging to genome-sized DNA molecules built from scratch, the year ahead looks exciting for life-science technology.
- Marissa Fessenden
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News |
Revolutionary microscopy technique nets most lucrative prize in science
The Breakthrough awards, each worth US$3 million, honour advances in the life sciences, physics and mathematics.
- Zeeya Merali
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Technology Feature |
Cryo-electron microscopy shapes up
As the imaging technique produces ever-sharper protein structures, researchers are racing to develop tools to assess how accurate they are.
- Monya Baker
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Technology Feature |
The hackers teaching old DNA sequencers new tricks
Outdated genome-sequencing machines need not die — researchers can repurpose them to drive next-generation biochemistry studies.
- Jeffrey M. Perkel
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News & Views |
A record-breaking microscope
An electron microscope has been developed that produces images at higher resolution than conventional approaches can achieve, and is suitable for studying fragile materials that can be damaged by electron beams.
- John Rodenburg
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Article |
Electron ptychography of 2D materials to deep sub-ångström resolution
Combining an electron microscope pixel-array detector that collects the entire distribution of scattered electrons with full-field ptychography greatly improves image resolution and contrast compared to traditional techniques, even at low beam energies.
- Yi Jiang
- , Zhen Chen
- & David A. Muller
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News |
Cutting-edge microscope spies on living cells inside the body
Imaging technique captures 3D video of cells at work in unprecedented detail.
- Alex Fox
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Letter |
Electromechanical vortex filaments during cardiac fibrillation
Using optical mapping and 3D ultrasound, the dynamics and interactions between electrical and mechanical phase singularities were analysed by simultaneously measuring the membrane potential, intracellular calcium concentration and mechanical contractions of the heart during normal rhythm and fibrillation.
- J. Christoph
- , M. Chebbok
- & S. Luther
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Technology Feature |
The microscope makers
A small community of scientists has taken a do-it-yourself approach to microscopy: when the right tool for the job doesn’t exist, make it.
- Brian Owens
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Letter |
Direct instrumental identification of catalytically active surface sites
Scanning tunnelling microscopy is used to distinguish between different active sites of a catalyst—such as boundaries between different materials—during a reaction, allowing the contributions of these sites to be evaluated.
- Jonas H. K. Pfisterer
- , Yunchang Liang
- & Aliaksandr S. Bandarenka
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