Department of Chemistry, Cambridge University, Cambridge CB2 1EW, United Kingdom.
Curr Opin Chem Biol. 2011 Oct;15(5):696-703. doi: 10.1016/j.cbpa.2011.04.001. Epub 2011 Apr 30.
Determining the organisation of key molecules on the surface of live cells in two dimensions and how this changes during biological processes, such as signaling, is a major challenge in cell biology and requires methods with nanoscale resolution. Recent advances in fluorescence imaging both at the diffraction limit tracking single molecules and exploiting super resolution imaging have now reached a stage where they can provide fundamentally new insights. Complementary developments in scanning ion conductance microscopy also allow the cell surface to be imaged with nanoscale resolution. The challenge now is to combine the information obtained using these different methods and on different cells to obtain a coherent view of the cell surface. In the future this needs to be driven by interdisciplinary research between physical scientists and biologists.
确定活细胞表面关键分子在二维空间中的排列方式，以及这些分子在信号转导等生物学过程中如何发生变化，是细胞生物学的一个主要挑战，这需要具有纳米级分辨率的方法。近年来，荧光成像技术在突破衍射极限追踪单个分子和利用超分辨率成像方面都取得了进展，现已达到能够提供全新见解的阶段。扫描离子电导显微镜的互补发展也使得能够以纳米级分辨率对细胞膜表面进行成像。现在的挑战是结合使用这些不同方法在不同细胞上获得的信息，以获得对细胞膜表面的连贯视图。在未来，这需要物理学家和生物学家之间开展跨学科研究来推动。
