Cell biological applications of scanning near-field optical microscopy (SNOM).

Scanning near-field optical microscopy (SNOM) yields high-resolution topographic and optical images and is an important technique for visualizing biological systems. We summarize the literature on SNOM of biological systems and present some of our recent applications in cellular biology. These include studies of: i) the binding of fluorescently conjugated lectins to cell surface glycoproteins on 3T3 Balb/c cells, ii) molecular interactions by fluorescence resonance energy transfer using photobleaching techniques, and iii) green fluorescent protein (GFP) expressed in bacteria.