Posts tagged as:

microscopy

Electron cryomicroscopy
reaches landmark molecular resolution

October 17, 2010

Electron microscopes can image biological macromolecules in cryogenic ice, but it shows them as low-contrast features in a grainy image (see below). Using enough electrons to reduce the graininess would first destroy the specimen.
The trick to getting enough information without frying the molecules is to image many specimens that are known to be identical, and [...]

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Molecular Electron Holography:
Progress toward atomic-resolution imaging?

October 20, 2009

Hans-Werner Fink’s group reports a remarkable advance in imaging individual biomolecules, with surprising physics, and (to me, at least) a somewhat mysterious date of publication.
The surprise is that it doesn’t destroy the molecules before imaging them.
The new generation of aberration-corrected electron microscopes achieve atomic resolution, but with a caveat — they succeed with robust, inorganic [...]

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Graphene Nanotechnology
(and TEAM Microscopes)

April 2, 2009

I’ve intended to write about the wonders of graphene and related materials for nanotechnology, both as products and as a basis for building productive nanosystems, but there is so much to say that I didn’t know where to begin. As Rosa reminds me, though, a great virtue of a blog is that you can use [...]

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3D Imaging & Research Opportunity [updated]

December 19, 2008

About the sample preparation techniques I described in an earlier post, Paul Rothemund writes to say
Those picture are neat; as far as I know, no one has done freeze fracture / freeze-etch electron microscopy [of DNA nanostructures]. That is a gap, certainly….
A study of the effects of critical point drying or freeze drying/sublimation on DNA [...]

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3D imaging of biological nanostructures

December 15, 2008

Deep-etch image of cytoskeleton, with origami inset (upper left)

“Three-dimensional reconstruction of the membrane skeleton at the plasma membrane interface by electron tomography” N Morone et al. JCB, 174:6, 851–862 (2006).

(Inset) “Folding DNA to create nanoscale shapes and patterns”
PWK Rothemund,Nature, 440:297–302 (2006). [pdf]

In an earlier post I mentioned that researchers have been hampered by difficulties with [...]

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