Zooming across time and space simultaneously with superresolution to understand how cells divide

[BootinUp]

The Conversation U.S.
@[e-mail]

Cells can be seen dividing in unprecedented detail with a new kind of superresolution imaging developed by a team at the University of Michigan.

Read more here and see the beautiful images ⬇️

#science #research #biology

https://theconversation.com/zooming-across-time-and-space-simultaneously-with-superresolution-to-understand-how-cells-divide-203324

https://newsie.social/@TheConversationUS/110843064772815855

excerpt from the linked article

Zooming across time and space simultaneously with superresolution to understand how cells divide
Published: July 20, 2023 8.30am EDT


Cell division, or the process of how daughter cells emerge from a mother cell, is fundamental to biology. Every cell inherits the same protein and DNA building blocks that make up the cell it originally came from. Yet exactly how these molecular building blocks arrange themselves into new cells has remained a mystery.

Studying cell division requires simultaneously viewing nanometer-scale macromolecules like proteins and DNA all the way up to millimeter-scale populations of cells, and over a time frame that ranges from seconds to weeks. Previous microscopes have been able to capture tiny objects only in short time frames, typically just tens of seconds. There hasn’t been a method that can examine a wide range of size and time scales all at once.

My team and I at the University of Michigan’s Bioplasmonics Group developed a new kind of superresolution imaging that reveals previously unknown features of how cells divide.

Illustration depiecting superresolution over time as an hourglass, where the bottom shows a protein and the top a dividing cell going from unresolved to resolved



This hourglass depicts the process of superresolution over time, where the bottom shows a protein and the top a dividing cell going from unresolved, at left, to resolved, at right. Somin Lee, CC BY-ND

Advancing superresolution imaging
It wasn’t possible to view cells at the molecular level until recently with the 2014 Nobel Prize-winning development of superresolution.