CAM is hosting Dr Carola Thoni from Lastek, who will be delivering the seminar "Resolution Revolution: STED and MINFLUX Nanoscopy".

In the early 1990s, it was believed the resolution of a light microscope is limited by the wavelength of light. Then in 1994 the idea of STED (STimulated Emission Depletion) was born, and now we can routinely achieve STED resolution between 25 and 30 nm with a light microscope. By applying advanced STED techniques like RESCue STED and DyMIN, we can image living cells in 3 dimensions and time.

Stefan Hell received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2014 for his development of STED microscopy, the first light-focusing microscope with a resolution at the nanoscale. In December 2016, Stefan achieved resolutions of about 1 nm with a light microscope using MINFLUX (MINimal photon FLUXes). 1 nm is the final goal for resolution in fluorescence microscopy, because this is roughly the size of fluorescent dyes labelling structures of interest.

Flyer: Resolution Revolution: STED and MINFLUX Nanoscopy (PDF)

69th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting: Stefan W. Hell, Reaching Molecular Size Resolution in Lens-Based Microscopy: the Diffraction Limit Blown Away