Bi-Chang Chen, Wesley R Legant, Kai Wang, Lin Shao, Daniel E Milkie, Michael W Davidson, Chris Janetopoulos, Xufeng S Wu, John A Hammer, Zhe Liu, Brian P English, Yuko Mimori-Kiyosue, Daniel P Romero, Alex T Ritter, Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz, Lillian Fritz-Laylin, R Dyche Mullins, Diana M Mitchell, Joshua N Bembenek, Anne-Cecile Reymann, Ralph Böhme, Stephan W Grill, Jennifer T Wang, Geraldine Seydoux, U Serdar Tulu, Daniel P Kiehart, Eric Betzig
Although fluorescence microscopy provides a crucial window into the physiology of living specimens, many biological processes are too fragile, are too small, or occur too rapidly to see clearly with existing tools. We crafted ultrathin light sheets from two-dimensional optical lattices that allowed us to image three-dimensional (3D) dynamics for hundreds of volumes, often at subsecond intervals, at the diffraction limit and beyond. We applied this to systems spanning four orders of magnitude in space and time, including the diffusion of single transcription factor molecules in stem cell spheroids, the dynamic instability of mitotic microtubules, the immunological synapse, neutrophil motility in a 3D matrix, and embryogenesis in Caenorhabditis elegans and Drosophila melanogaster...
October 24, 2014: Science