Imaging biological nanostructures with super-resolution fluorescence microscopy

VON BILDERLING, CATALINA; BARABAS, FEDERICO D.; BORDENAVE, MARTÍN D.; MASULLO, LUCIANO; BISBAL, MARIANO; CÁCERES, ALFREDO; UNSAIN, NICOLÁS; LANTOS, ANDRÉS; CARLEVARO, GIANNINA A.; MUCCI, JUAN S. ; CAMPETELLA, OSCAR E. ; STEFANI, FERNANDO D.

Tucumán

Congreso; III Latin American Federation of Biophysical Societies (LAFeBS); 2016

Sociedad Argentina de Biofísica

Biological nanostructures that are indistinguishable with conventional fluorescence microscopes become observable by means of methods known as super-resolution fluorescence microscopy or optical nanoscopy [1], which enable imaging with theoretically unlimited spatial resolution. In practice, the achieved resolution is limited to 20 to 50 nm due to experimental factors.Here, we present two nanoscopes designed and constructed at CIBION that deliver super-resolved images of biological specimens through Stochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscopy (STORM) and Stimulated Emission Depletion (STED), respectively. We explain the working principle of the nanoscopes and illustrate their performance with super-resolved images of i) periodic nanometric structures of actin and spectrin in the subcortical skeleton of neuronal axons and ii) domains of mucins and trans-sialidase on the membrane of T. cruzi.