Featured
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Letter |
Electromechanical vortex filaments during cardiac fibrillation
Using optical mapping and 3D ultrasound, the dynamics and interactions between electrical and mechanical phase singularities were analysed by simultaneously measuring the membrane potential, intracellular calcium concentration and mechanical contractions of the heart during normal rhythm and fibrillation.
- J. Christoph
- , M. Chebbok
- & S. Luther
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Technology Feature |
The microscope makers
A small community of scientists has taken a do-it-yourself approach to microscopy: when the right tool for the job doesn’t exist, make it.
- Brian Owens
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Letter |
Direct instrumental identification of catalytically active surface sites
Scanning tunnelling microscopy is used to distinguish between different active sites of a catalyst—such as boundaries between different materials—during a reaction, allowing the contributions of these sites to be evaluated.
- Jonas H. K. Pfisterer
- , Yunchang Liang
- & Aliaksandr S. Bandarenka
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Letter |
Elements of Eoarchean life trapped in mineral inclusions
In situ infrared spectroscopy maps the occurrences of chemical bonds within tiny inclusions in 3,700-million-year-old metasedimentary rocks from West Greenland, finding greater evidence for organic life at this early date.
- T. Hassenkam
- , M. P. Andersson
- & M. T. Rosing
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Letter |
Layer-dependent ferromagnetism in a van der Waals crystal down to the monolayer limit
Magneto-optical Kerr effect microscopy is used to show that monolayer chromium triiodide is an Ising ferromagnet with out-of-plane spin orientation.
- Bevin Huang
- , Genevieve Clark
- & Xiaodong Xu
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News & Views |
Signalling under the microscope
G-protein-coupled receptors are biological targets for drug discovery. Developments in cryo-electron microscopy have enabled the solution of the structure of a class B receptor in complex with its signalling protein. Two biologists and a microscopist explain the exciting implications of this work. See Article p.118
- Ching-Ju Tsai
- , Joerg Standfuss
- & Robert M. Glaeser
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Research Highlight |
Cells spotted in see-through bone
A technique that makes bone transparent helps researchers capture images of key cells.
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News & Views |
A larger palette for biological imaging
Biological molecules are often imaged by attaching fluorescent labels — but only a few label types can be used at a time. A method that could smash the record for the number of labels that can be used together is now reported. See Letter p.465
- Charles H. Camp Jr
- & Marcus T. Cicerone
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Letter |
The effect of illumination on the formation of metal halide perovskite films
Films of metal halide perovskite are used as the absorber material in solar cells, and light irradiation during their formation is shown to affect their crystallization, morphology and photovoltaic performance.
- Amita Ummadisingu
- , Ludmilla Steier
- & Michael Grätzel
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Letter |
Super-multiplex vibrational imaging
Stimulated Raman scattering under electronic pre-resonance conditions, combined with a new palette of probes, enables super-multiplex imaging of molecular targets in living cells with very high vibrational selectivity and sensitivity.
- Lu Wei
- , Zhixing Chen
- & Wei Min
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Technology Feature |
A measure of molecular muscle
Innovative tools are revealing the forces that guide cellular processes such as embryonic development and tumour growth.
- Michael Eisenstein
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Letter |
Mapping vibrational surface and bulk modes in a single nanocube
Spatial mapping of optical and acoustic, bulk and surface vibrational modes in magnesium oxide nanocubes is demonstrated using a single electron probe.
- Maureen J. Lagos
- , Andreas Trügler
- & Philip E. Batson
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News |
Quantum microscope offers MRI for molecules
Diamond-based imaging system uses magnetic resonance of electrons to detect charged atoms and peer at chemical reactions in real time.
- Sara Reardon
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Letter |
Amplified stimulated emission in upconversion nanoparticles for super-resolution nanoscopy
Super-resolution optical microscopy based on stimulated emission depletion effects can now be performed at much lower light intensities than before by using bright upconversion emission from thulium-doped nanoparticles.
- Yujia Liu
- , Yiqing Lu
- & Dayong Jin
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Technology Feature |
The real-time technicolour living brain
Neurobiologists are coming up with innovative ways to get high-resolution pictures of the whole brain at work.
- Amber Dance
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Research Highlights |
See-through rodents
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Research Highlights |
Single ions make sharper images
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Technology Feature |
Illuminating life's building blocks
A suite of tools now enables scientists to see proteins at work in living cells at the single-molecule level.
- Marissa Fessenden
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Letter |
Visualizing coherent intermolecular dipole–dipole coupling in real space
Luminescence induced by highly localized excitations that are produced by electrons tunnelling from the tip of a scanning tunnelling microscope is used to map the spatial distribution of the excitonic coupling in well-defined arrangements of a few zinc-phthalocyanine molecules and the dependence of this spatial distribution on the relative orientation and phase of the transition dipoles of the individual molecules.
- Yang Zhang
- , Yang Luo
- & J. G. Hou
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Letter |
Super-resolution imaging reveals distinct chromatin folding for different epigenetic states
Using super-resolution imaging to directly observe the three-dimensional organization of Drosophila chromatin at a scale spanning sizes from individual genes to entire gene regulatory domains, the authors find that transcriptionally active, inactive and Polycomb-repressed chromatin states each have a distinct spatial organisation.
- Alistair N. Boettiger
- , Bogdan Bintu
- & Xiaowei Zhuang
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News & Views |
Super-resolution ultrasound
By infusing blood vessels with gas-filled microbubbles and using rapid ultrasound imaging to detect the bubbles, super-resolution imaging of an entire vessel system has been achieved in a rat brain. See Letter p.499
- Ben Cox
- & Paul Beard
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Letter |
Ultrafast ultrasound localization microscopy for deep super-resolution vascular imaging
Conventional clinical ultrasound imaging has, at best, sub-millimetre-scale resolution, but now a new ultrasound technique is demonstrated that is based on fast tracking of transient signals from a sub-wavelength contrast agent and has sufficiently high resolution to map the microvasculature deep into organs.
- Claudia Errico
- , Juliette Pierre
- & Mickael Tanter
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News & Views |
Pigments on the move
In plant cells, the pigment anthocyanin is transported to a membrane-bounded organelle called the vacuole for storage. A previously unidentified transport pathway involving vacuolar-membrane extensions mediates this process.
- Diane C. Bassham
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Outlook |
Cell imaging: Beyond the limits
Powerful super-resolution microscopes that allow researchers to explore the world at the nanoscale are set to transform our understanding of the cell.
- Katherine Bourzac
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News |
Next-generation X-ray source fires up
Swedish synchrotron promises to open up new avenues for researchers.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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News & Views |
Machine learning for 3D microscopy
Artificial neural networks have been combined with microscopy to visualize the 3D structure of biological cells. This could lead to solutions for difficult imaging problems, such as the multiple scattering of light.
- Laura Waller
- & Lei Tian
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Research Highlights |
Graphene protects cells for imaging
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Letter |
Quantum coherent optical phase modulation in an ultrafast transmission electron microscope
The coherent manipulation of electron quantum states using light, commonly employed in atoms and molecules, is extended to the case of free electron beams using ultrafast transmission electron microscopy; this approach may enable a range of applications in ultrafast electron imaging and spectroscopy down to attosecond precision.
- Armin Feist
- , Katharina E. Echternkamp
- & Claus Ropers
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News |
Mobile-phone microscope detects eye parasite
Tool demonstrates new thinking for diagnostic technologies in remote locales.
- Boer Deng
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Letter |
Vibrational spectroscopy in the electron microscope
Recent advances in electron microscopy are shown to allow vibrational spectroscopy at high spatial resolution in a scanning transmission electron microscope, and also to enable the direct detection of hydrogen.
- Ondrej L. Krivanek
- , Tracy C. Lovejoy
- & Peter A. Crozier
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Outlook |
Medical imaging: Removing the blindfold
Using a variety of creative imaging techniques, researchers are tracking the dynamic interactions of immune and cancer cells. Their results will guide drug development.
- Katherine Bourzac
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Letter |
Heat dissipation in atomic-scale junctions
An innovative technique based on scanning tunnelling probes with integrated thermocouples is developed and used to measure heat dissipation in the electrodes of atomic and molecular junctions.
- Woochul Lee
- , Kyeongtae Kim
- & Pramod Reddy
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Article |
The architecture of Tetrahymena telomerase holoenzyme
The long-awaited structure of a telomerase holoenzyme, from Tetrahymena, has been obtained by electron microscopy; affinity labelling of subunits and modelling with NMR and crystal structures of various components allowed the identification of the catalytic core and subunit interactions, and the functional role of the subunits in telomerase processivity was enabled by performing the first reconstitution of the holoenzyme in vitro.
- Jiansen Jiang
- , Edward J. Miracco
- & Juli Feigon
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Technology Feature |
Two microscopes are better than one
Using two different kinds of imaging can give scientists a powerful combination of high specificity and detailed structural information.
- Caitlin Smith
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Letter |
Non-invasive imaging through opaque scattering layers
The image of a fluorescent object hidden behind an opaque layer can be retrieved non-invasively by exploiting the correlation properties of the speckle pattern produced by illuminating the object through the layer using laser light.
- Jacopo Bertolotti
- , Elbert G. van Putten
- & Allard P. Mosk
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News |
Small is beautiful
Photo competition highlights the complexity of microscopic natural specimens.
- Daniel Cressey
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Letter |
Bonding and structure of a reconstructed (001) surface of SrTiO3 from TEM
A simple and accessible method of probing the nature of bonding on the very surface of a material is reported, using transmission electron microscopy: the technologically important compound strontium titanate is examined as an example.
- Guo-zhen Zhu
- , Guillaume Radtke
- & Gianluigi A. Botton
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Letter |
Probing graphene grain boundaries with optical microscopy
A simple method to observe grain boundaries in graphene is reported, using ultraviolet irradiation in humid conditions followed by optical microscopy.
- Dinh Loc Duong
- , Gang Hee Han
- & Young Hee Lee
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News & Views |
Reconstructing the third dimension
An approach to microscopy has been developed that can be used to determine, from a single imaging angle, both the position of a specimen's individual atoms in the plane of observation and the atoms' vertical position. See Letter p.243
- Dilano Saldin
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Letter |
‘Big Bang’ tomography as a new route to atomic-resolution electron tomography
A tomography technique based on the idea that Fourier components of scattered electron waves obey a relationship analogous to that expressed in cosmology by Hubble’s law can be used to image at atomic resolution from a single viewing direction.
- Dirk Van Dyck
- , Joerg R. Jinschek
- & Fu-Rong Chen
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Letter |
Electron tomography at 2.4-ångström resolution
An electron tomography method is demonstrated that can determine the three-dimensional structure of a gold nanoparticle at 2.4 Å resolution, including the locations of some of the individual atoms within the sample.
- M. C. Scott
- , Chien-Chun Chen
- & Jianwei Miao
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Research Highlights |
3D ripples in a 2D layer
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Technology Feature |
Bright light, better labels
The tiniest structures in cells can be seen only using sophisticated instrumentation and informatics, but what biologists really need are improved fluorescent probes.
- Monya Baker
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Research Highlights |
Mobile imaging of the mouse brain
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News |
Miniature microscopes capture neurons in action
Device images brain activity in mice without hindering their movement.
- Zoë Corbyn
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Letter |
Functional mapping of single spines in cortical neurons in vivo
- Xiaowei Chen
- , Ulrich Leischner
- & Arthur Konnerth
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- Atomic force microscopy
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- Wide-field fluorescence microscopy