Posted by
John Oreopoulos on
URL: http://confocal-microscopy-list.275.s1.nabble.com/commercial-TIRF-system-tp7564151p7565403.html
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George, it goes back much further than the 1990's. I'm preparing a talk for the Montreal Light Microscopy Course on TIRF microscopy and found these:
Hirschfeld, T., Total reflection fluorescence. Canadian Journal of Spectroscopy, 1965. 10:I28 .
Hirschfeld, T., Optical microscopic observation of single small molecules. Applied Optics, 1976. 15(12): p. 2965-2966.
Dave Piston also made me aware of a much older use of TIR illumination (without fluorescence) by Aime Cotton that goes back to 1897. Basically, this was a form of highly oblique illumination through a prism used to study the absorption of chiral molecules onto different surfaces.
Similar arguments could be used to say that confocal imaging goes back to the early 1980s, mid 1970's, or the 1960's if you include Minsky's design.
What's old is new and what's new is old again. Why do certain technologies like these get "rediscovered"? I think it has to do with the practicality of the instrumentation and all of the other supporting hardware that wasn't around initially or was too expensive. For example, lasers became cheaper and smaller, computers became cheaper/faster/powerful, and the detectors became a bit better, etc. And in the case of fluorescence imaging, the photoactivatable/photoswitchable fluorescent proteins didn't show up for a while longer. But ask yourself this: Was there anything really preventing any of us from doing super-resolution imaging (say by localization microscopy with bright organic dyes) in the 1990's? All of the technology/hardware and the probes to do this were there (even the concept of sub-pixel localization has its origins outside of biology before 2002 in remote sensing and astronomy - star mapping), but the ideas to put it all together just weren't fleshed out I guess. These things take time as the previous examples above show. The internet does a better job of propagating these ideas faster now, so maybe the lag won't be as big as it was before.
Doubtless, super-resolution imaging will become an important and common part of biological research someday (10, 20 years?). Many companies, including the one I'm employed with, are working furiously to make these "newer" super-resolution techniques more practical and more turnkey. However, in my humble opinion, "older" techniques like confocal, colocalization (diffraction-limited), TIRF, single particle tracking, FRET, FRAP, etc. will also still be used (maybe every lab will have their own personal confocal by then). And others have pointed out in other threads that these more traditional techniques themselves are still highly under-used today. Not every question to be answered by fluorescence imaging requires super-resolution. I think it really depends on what the researcher is trying to look at and understand. Heck, I've seen some amazing work done fairly recently with a basic epifluorescence microscope.
But I could be wrong... There's a nice paper in Bioessays on this topic:
Saka, S. and S.O. Rizzoli, Super-resolution imaging prompts re-thinking of cell biology mechanisms. Bioessays, 2012. 34(5): p. 386-395.
Let's see what happens. I'll reply to this posting in 10 years. If I'm wrong George, I'll buy you a beer.
John Oreopoulos
Research Assistant
Spectral Applied Research
Richmond Hill, Ontario
Canada
www.spectral.ca
On 2012-05-17, at 7:32 PM, George McNamara wrote:
> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
>
http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy> *****
>
> Hi JP,
>
> Price-wise, check out the
http://www.tirftechnologies.com/ hardware. for SMD see appnote
http://www.tirftechnologies.com/articles/single_molecule_detection/Single_Molecule_Detection.pdf>
> TIRF (and confocal) is soooo 1990's - check out the Vutara SR-200 fluorescence nanoscope - it also does SMD.
http://vutara.com/>
>
> George
>
>
> On 5/16/2012 9:38 PM, Jean-Pierre CLAMME wrote:
>> *****
>> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
>>
http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy>> *****
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I would like to get inputs about commercial turn Key, TIRF systems for
>> single molecule particle tracking. I'm looking for a system that is
>> relatively easy to operate and could be put in a core facility.
>>
>> Please let me know what you think about some you worked with and liked or
>> disliked.
>>
>> Thank you
>>
>> JP
>>
>>
>> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>> Jean-Pierre CLAMME, PhD
>> Chief Scientist
>> Nitto Denko Technical
>> 501 Via Del Monte
>> Oceanside, CA 92058
>> E-mail:
[hidden email]
>> Phone: +760.435.7065
>>
>>