Posted by
Kirti Prakash-2 on
URL: http://confocal-microscopy-list.275.s1.nabble.com/Usefulness-of-super-resolution-tp7587169p7587189.html
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Dear all,
Superresolution microscopy has also brought a lot of new insights into chromatin organisation which was missing from the discussion (Bohn et al. 2010, Ricci et al. 2015, Boettiger et al. 2016).
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006349510007319http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867415001324https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v529/n7586/full/nature16496.htmlSuperresolution further helped to find new structural features of chromatin. We found that during interphase, chromatin dynamically gets remodelled upon stress and adapts to a hollow, condensed ring and rod-like configuration, which reverses back to the initial structure when stress conditions cease (Kirmes et al. 2015). During meiosis, chromatin arranges itself into periodic and distinct functional compartments, indicating the spatial organisation of active and inactive regions of the genome (Prakash et al. 2015). These features were not possible to see with conventional microscopes.
https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-015-0802-2http://www.pnas.org/content/112/47/14635.shortSo, definitely super resolution microscopy has brought a lot of novel insights in various areas of biology.
Regarding concerns of Oliver and Gabor, I think most super resolution microscopes require a lot of technical knowledge, and their expensive cost makes a lot of microscopy users think twice before using them. In this regard, I recently showed that a conventional epifluorescence setup could be used to generate high-resolution single molecule images.
http://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2017/05/17/121061.full.pdfAnother attractive option is from ONI guys, who have come up with a desktop size microscope to do super resolution. I recently tried their microscope, and apart from changing the typical microscope prototype (with oculars, big size, etc.), the desktop microscope is very stable and easy to use (no alignment, etc.). I believe this to be the future of microscopy as the institute and lab space gets smaller and smaller.
I hope such alternative, relatively cheaper solutions can bring super resolution to the masses.
Best,
Kirti