IN LIVING COLOR

Abstract

FLUORESCENCE IMAGING techniques sporting such catchy acronyms as STORM and PALM can zoom down to the nanometer scale (C&EN, Sept. 4,2006, page 49), but capturing multicolor images with these methods remains a challenge because of the lack of suitable photoswitchable fluorescent probes. Now, two independent teams have demonstrated multicolor imaging with STORM and PALM, which both describe the same concept of super-resolution imaging. Imaging of two or more labels at the same time is critical for these methods to be useful in cell biology, says Stefan W. Hell, a biophysicist at Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, in Gottingen, Germany, and one of the team leaders. Multicolor imaging would allow researchers to look at many different cellular components at the same time. He and coworkers demonstrate two-color nanoscale microscopy with a variation of PALM and STORM ( AppL Phys. B 2007,88,161). The other team, professor of chemistry and chemical biology Xiaowei Zhuang and coworkers at Harvard ...