Stagediving with biomolecules improves optical microscopy

Press release from TU Dresden (B CUBE - Center for Molecular Bioengineering) and Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg

Physicists from Dresden and Würzburg have developed a novel method for optical microscopy. Using biological motors and single quantum dots, they acquire ultra-high-resolution images.

The resolution of conventional optical microscopy is limited by the fundamental physical principle of diffraction to about one half of the wavelength of the light: If the distance between two objects is smaller than this so-called "diffraction limit", they can no longer be visually separated - their image appears "blurred ". To acquire optical images at the scale of few nanometers, this is clearly not sufficient.