Date:
October
8, 2014
Source:
Nobel
Foundation
Summary:
The
2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Eric Betzig of Janelia Farm
Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Stefan W. Hell of Max Planck
Institute for Biophysical Chemistry and the German Cancer Research Center; and
William E. Moerner of Stanford University "for the development of
super-resolved fluorescence microscopy."
The
principle of STED microscopy and the principle of single-molecule microscopy.
Credit: Illustration © Johan Jarnestad/The Royal Swedish Academy of
Sciences
The
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in
Chemistry for 2014 to Eric Betzig of Janelia Farm Research Campus, Howard
Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, VA, USA; Stefan W. Hell of Max Planck
Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, and German Cancer Research
Center, Heidelberg, Germany; and William E. Moerner of Stanford University,
Stanford, CA, USA, "for the development of super-resolved fluorescence
microscopy."
Surpassing the limitations of the light microscope
For
a long time optical microscopy was held back by a presumed limitation: that it
would never obtain a better resolution than half the wavelength of light.
Helped by fluorescent molecules the Nobel Laureates in Chemistry 2014
ingeniously circumvented this limitation. Their ground-breaking work has
brought optical microscopy into the nanodimension.
In
what has become known as nanoscopy, scientists visualize the pathways of
individual molecules inside living cells. They can see how molecules create
synapses between nerve cells in the brain; they can track proteins involved in
Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and Huntington's diseases as they aggregate; they
follow individual proteins in fertilized eggs as these divide into embryos.
It
was all but obvious that scientists should ever be able to study living cells
in the tiniest molecular detail. In 1873, the microscopist Ernst Abbe
stipulated a physical limit for the maximum resolution of traditional optical
microscopy: it could never become better than 0.2 micrometres. Eric Betzig,
Stefan W. Hell and William E. Moerner are awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
2014 for having bypassed this limit. Due to their achievements the optical
microscope can now peer into the nanoworld.
Two
separate principles are rewarded. One enables the method stimulated emission
depletion (STED) microscopy, developed by Stefan Hell in 2000. Two laser
beams are utilized; one stimulates fluorescent molecules to glow, another
cancels out all fluorescence except for that in a nanometre-sized volume.
Scanning over the sample, nanometre for nanometre, yields an image with a
resolution better than Abbe's stipulated limit.
Eric
Betzig and William Moerner, working separately, laid the foundation for the
second method, single-molecule microscopy. The method relies upon the
possibility to turn the fluorescence of individual molecules on and off.
Scientists image the same area multiple times, letting just a few interspersed
molecules glow each time. Superimposing these images yields a dense super-image
resolved at the nanolevel. In 2006 Eric Betzig utilized this method for the
first time.
Today,
nanoscopy is used world-wide and new knowledge of greatest benefit to humankind
is produced on a daily basis.
end
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Nobel
Foundation. "2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Super-resolved fluorescence
microscopy." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 8 October 2014.
<www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141008085419.htm>.
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