National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, Bethesda, MD, United States.
Curr Opin Cell Biol. 2012 Feb;24(1):125-33. doi: 10.1016/j.ceb.2011.11.010. Epub 2011 Dec 30.
Visualization methods are key to gaining insights into cellular structure and function. Since diffraction has long confined optical microscopes to a resolution no better than hundreds of nanometers, the observation of ultrastructural features has traditionally been the domain of electron microscopes (EM). In the past decade, however, advances in super-resolution fluorescence microscopy have considerably expanded the capability of light-based imaging techniques. Advantages of fluorescent labeling such as high sensitivity, specificity, and multichannel capability, can now be exploited to dissect ultrastructural features of cells. With recent methods capable of imaging specific proteins with a resolution on the order of a few tens of nanometers in 3-dimensions, this has made it possible to elucidate the molecular organization of many complex cellular structures.
可视化方法是深入了解细胞结构和功能的关键。由于衍射长期以来将光学显微镜的分辨率限制在数百纳米以内，因此超微结构特征的观察一直是电子显微镜（EM）的领域。然而，在过去的十年中，超分辨率荧光显微镜的进步极大地扩展了基于光的成像技术的能力。荧光标记的优点，如高灵敏度、特异性和多通道能力，现在可以用来剖析细胞的超微结构特征。最近的方法能够以几十纳米的分辨率在三维空间中对特定蛋白质进行成像，这使得阐明许多复杂细胞结构的分子组织成为可能。
