
Focus On Super-Resolution
For hundreds of years optical microscopy was relegated to the diffraction-limited regime, unable to resolve details smaller than approximately 200 nm (in XY) and 500 nm (in Z). That limit has been shattered, spawning a number of techniques and culminating in the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry being awarded to pioneers in super-resolution microscopy. We can now image with twice the resolution as previous with structured illumination microscopy (SIM), and about 10x greater resolution with Stochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscopy (STORM).