Biologists have come to accept certain limitations when it comes to examining the smallest parts of a cell through a microscope.
“When you’re looking at cells in the brain, one of the most limiting things is when you get to very small structures, you cannot see them. They’re basically blurry,” said Diego Restropo, a professor of cell and developmental biology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. “It has to do with physics; it’s something you couldn’t get around.”
Restropo and his fellow researchers at the School of Medicine are very close to overcoming that limitation with a new kind of tool, a Stimulated Emission Depletion microscope that draws on the power of laser beams to ramp up resolution. Boulder-based physicist Stephanie Meyer is currently completing the construction of the STED microscope in one of the school’s research buildings, carefully assembling the top-of-the-line device in a small laboratory on campus.
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