Microscopy articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    The detailed 3D organization of human centromere components is unknown. Here, the authors use super-resolution microscopy to present a working model for a common core centromere structure.

    • Ayantika Sen Gupta
    • , Chris Seidel
    •  & Jennifer L. Gerton
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the authors describe a pathogenic fungus from a 400-million-year-old fossil plant from the Devonian Rhynie Chert in Scotland. They use advanced imaging methods to determine that the fungus belongs to the sac fungi, the most diverse group of Fungi today.

    • Christine Strullu-Derrien
    • , Tomasz Goral
    •  & David L. Hawksworth
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Transmission electron microscopy is essential for three-dimensional atomic structure determination, but solving complex heterogeneous structures containing light elements remains challenging. Here, authors solve a complex nanostructure using atomic resolution ptychographic electron tomography.

    • Philipp M. Pelz
    • , Sinéad M. Griffin
    •  & Colin Ophus
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The visible evidence bridging atomic defects with catalytic properties has been scarcely explored. Using differential phase contrast technology, this work discloses the existence of a polarized electric field surrounding the antisite defects of a monolayer MoS2 material and its correlation to its electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution property.

    • Jie Xu
    • , Xiong-Xiong Xue
    •  & Jun Lu
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors use deep learning to detect and segment unlabeled and unaltered protein aggregates in living cells from transmitted-light images. The method provides a way to quantitatively study protein aggregation dynamics in a simple, fast and accurate way.

    • Khalid A. Ibrahim
    • , Kristin S. Grußmayer
    •  & Aleksandra Radenovic
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Microsporidia are obligate intracellular parasitic fungi that can cause opportunistic infections in humans. Here, Antao et al. investigate the intracellular life cycle of human-infecting Encephalitozoon intestinalis using serial block-face scanning electron microscopy to characterize parasite organelle development and host-cell mitochondrial remodeling.

    • Noelle V. Antao
    • , Cherry Lam
    •  & Gira Bhabha
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here authors explore volume diffusion within crystalline solids at the atomic scale. They use high resolution microscopy techniques to provide insights into the movement of individual atoms within a crystal lattice, revealing the intricate dynamics of volume diffusion processes.

    • Peter Schweizer
    • , Amit Sharma
    •  & Xavier Maeder
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mie resonances are typically manipulated through varying nanostructure shape/size. Here, authors found that Gaussian beam displacement excites higher-order multipolar modes, not accessible by plane wave, featuring maximal linear and nonlinear scattering efficiency when the focus is misaligned.

    • Yu-Lung Tang
    • , Te-Hsin Yen
    •  & Shi-Wei Chu
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Phase transition dynamics are an important concern in the wide applications of metal halide perovskites. Here authors apply low-dose imaging technique to reveal the phase transition dynamics of CsPbI3 during in-situ heating process with atomic resolution.

    • Mengmeng Ma
    • , Xuliang Zhang
    •  & Boyuan Shen
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Deep imaging in complex scattering media is hindered by multiple light scattering. Here, the authors proposed a method to trace multiple scattering trajectories in situ using a recorded reflection matrix and achieved enhanced imaging depth by converting these multiple scattering to signal waves.

    • Sungsam Kang
    • , Yongwoo Kwon
    •  & Wonshik Choi
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Electron holography and microscopy have long been used to map static electric and magnetic fields. Here, authors establish Lorentz Microscopy of Optical Fields, a new technique that uses the deflection and interference of an electron beam to obtain phase-resolved images of nanoscale optical fields.

    • John H. Gaida
    • , Hugo Lourenço-Martins
    •  & Claus Ropers
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nuclear factors rapidly scan the genome for targets, but the role of nuclear organization in such search is uncharted. Here, by combining single molecule tracking of nuclear proteins with high resolution imaging of the nucleus, the authors investigate the search mechanism used by factors such as p53.

    • Matteo Mazzocca
    • , Alessia Loffreda
    •  & Davide Mazza
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Brain morphology is complex, heterogenous and miniaturized—and notoriously difficult to visualize. Dembitskaya et al. show how fluorescence ‘shadow imaging’ gives detailed and comprehensive access to the cellular architecture of the mouse brain in vivo.

    • Yulia Dembitskaya
    • , Andrew K. J. Boyce
    •  & U. Valentin Nägerl
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Radiolysis is known for damaging crystals. Here, using STEM, researchers observed radiolysis-driven bond-breakage, atomic movements, & crystal restructuring in rutile TiO2, and proposed a “2-step rolling” model of building blocks. These results open possibilities for constructive use of radiolysis.

    • Silu Guo
    • , Hwanhui Yun
    •  & K. Andre Mkhoyan
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The mechanical and thermal properties of semicrystalline polymers are governed by the hierarchical structure comprising lamellar crystals, but the tilt angles of the molecular chains in the lamellae and their origin remains controversial. Here, the authors report a direct determination of molecular chain orientation in the lamellar crystals of high-density polyethylene using electron-diffraction based imaging with nanometre-scale positional resolution.

    • Shusuke Kanomi
    • , Hironori Marubayashi
    •  & Hiroshi Jinnai
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Demand for data recovery from monolithic storage devices is high but current methods are inefficient. Here, authors develop a robotic OCT-guided inspection and microsurgery method, minimizing damage to device and enhancing data recovery efficiency.

    • Bin He
    • , Yuxin Zhang
    •  & Ning Zhang
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Modern microscopes can image a sample with sub-Angstrom and sub-picosecond resolutions, but this often requires analysis of tremendously large datasets. Here, the authors demonstrate that an autonomous experiment can yield over a 70% reduction in dataset size while still producing high-fidelity images of the sample.

    • Saugat Kandel
    • , Tao Zhou
    •  & Mathew J. Cherukara
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Electron detectors used in electron microscope are often unable to provide quantified information without calibration. Here, by combining existing detectors with hardware signal processing, the authors demonstrated that the detectors can be run in an electron counting mode enabling imaging at faster speeds, at lower electron doses, and reduces the barrier to quantitative measurements.

    • Jonathan J. P. Peters
    • , Tiarnan Mullarkey
    •  & Lewys Jones
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here authors use iDPC-STEM to directly image the rotation of linkers in MOFs, demonstrating an approach to study the local flexibility. They show that the dynamic properties of UiO-66-X are likely correlated to their macroscopic properties of CO2 uptake.

    • Boyang Liu
    • , Xiao Chen
    •  & Tiefeng Wang
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Quantum super-resolution techniques take advantage of the non-classical nature of the quantum emitters, but are time-consuming. Here, the authors present a machine learning-assisted approach for fast antibunching-based super-resolution imaging, with a 12-fold speed up over the conventional approach

    • Zhaxylyk A. Kudyshev
    • , Demid Sychev
    •  & Vladimir M. Shalaev
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Constructing the human reference atlas requires integration and analysis of massive amounts of data. Here the authors report the setup and results of the Hacking the Human Body machine learning algorithm development competition hosted by the Human Biomolecular Atlas and the Human Protein Atlas teams.

    • Yashvardhan Jain
    • , Leah L. Godwin
    •  & Katy Börner
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors present phase intensity nanoscope (PINE), which uses an integrated phase-intensity multilayer thin film to localize randomly distributed nanoprobes and resolve sub-10 nm cellular architectures. They demonstrate dynamic imaging of nanoscopic reorganization over 250 h and find that nanoscale rearrangements emerging into macroscale rearrangements are synchronized.

    • Guangjie Cui
    • , Yunbo Liu
    •  & Somin Eunice Lee
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Traditional optical microscope, while bulky, often fails to deliver optimal performance. Here, the authors have engineered an integrated microscope of 0.15 cm3 in volume and a weight of 0.5 g, which outperforms a commercial microscope and can be seamlessly integrated with a smartphone.

    • Yuanlong Zhang
    • , Xiaofei Song
    •  & Qionghai Dai
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Graphene has many intriguing electronic properties. One of note is the absence of backscattering of electrons confined to a single valley. Spin-orbit interactions can allow backscattering, and here, Sun et al. use this spin-orbit coupling dependence of backscattering to measure the strength of the spin-orbit interaction in a graphene/tungsten selenide heterostructure.

    • Lihuan Sun
    • , Louk Rademaker
    •  & Christoph Renner
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The optical field inside a nanophotonic particle accelerator is revealed. To this end, the authors developed a field imaging technique for spatial and spectral resolution on the nanometer scale.

    • Tal Fishman
    • , Urs Haeusler
    •  & Ido Kaminer
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Current liquid-based optical clearing protocols can suffer from solvent evaporation and photobleaching. Here, the authors develop a solid high-refractive-index polymer to embed mouse and human tissues for clearing and antifade high-resolution 3D imaging.

    • Fu-Ting Hsiao
    • , Hung-Jen Chien
    •  & Shiue-Cheng Tang
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Majorana bound states are an elusive but promising platform for future topological quantum computation. Here, the authors use local shot noise spectroscopy to determine the nature of charge transfer into zero-energy bound states in superconducting vortices and rule out the presence of impurity states.

    • Jian-Feng Ge
    • , Koen M. Bastiaans
    •  & Milan P. Allan
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Existing single-molecule localization microscopy analyses overlook important temporal information in living cells. Here, the authors report nanoscale spatiotemporal indexing clustering (NASTIC), which leverages a video game algorithm to fast-track the investigation of the complex temporal dynamics of protein clustering.

    • Tristan P. Wallis
    • , Anmin Jiang
    •  & Frédéric A. Meunier
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Coherent Stokes Raman scattering (CSRS) has never been explored previously for chemical imaging due to a strong fluorescence background. Here, the authors demonstrate the first fluorescence-free CSRS laser scanning microscope and predict CSRS’ unique backscattering properties.

    • Sandro Heuke
    •  & Hervé Rigneault