What is Super Resolution Microscopy ?

What is Super Resolution Microscopy ?

Date: Wednesday 26 October, 2022
Time: 6am NZDT, 4am AEDT, 3am AEST, 3:30am ACDT, 1am AWST
 

Super-resolution microscopy allows users to resolve fluorescently-labelled structures on size scales beyond the diffraction limit (200-300nm). In the past few years, super-resolution microscopy techniques have become increasingly commonplace methods in cell biology. This increase in popularity has been due to an active community of developers, growing numbers of commercial instruments, novel biological discoveries, and the awarding of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to pioneers in the field. However, understanding how these techniques work can be somewhat daunting due to the range of optical, photophysical, and computational concepts underpinning them.
 

In this talk, we will cover the basics of how the three most common super-resolution techniques (SIM, STED and SMLM) work, including factors such as labelling, hardware, image processing, and the advantages and disadvantages of the methods. We will also see examples of how different super-resolution techniques have been used to successfully address different biological problems. Finally, we will examine the current state-of-the art and future directions for the field of super-resolution microscopy.
 

Learning objectives:

• How the super-resolution methods SIM, STED and SMLM achieve resolutions beyond the diffraction limit
• The relative advantages and disadvantages of different super-resolution techniques
• Examples of where super-resolution microscopy can has been used successfully
• What the next generation of super-resolution microscopy techniques might look like.

Speaker : Dr Sian Culley, Andor