X10 expansion microscopy enables 25-nm resolution on conventional microscopes.

ABSTRACT: Expansion microscopy is a recently introduced imaging technique that achieves super-resolution through physically expanding the specimen by ~4×, after embedding into a swellable gel. The resolution attained is, correspondingly, approximately fourfold better than the diffraction limit, or ~70 nm. This is a major improvement over conventional microscopy, but still lags behind modern STED or STORM setups, whose resolution can reach 20-30 nm. We addressed this issue here by introducing an improved gel recipe that enables an expansion factor of ~10× in each dimension, which corresponds to an expansion of the sample volume by more than 1,000-fold. Our protocol, which we termed X10 microscopy, achieves a resolution of 25-30 nm on conventional epifluorescence microscopes. X10 provides multi-color

SUBMITTER: Truckenbrodt S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6123658 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature