Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Scientists at Howard Hughes Medial Institute have developed a new light microscope that is so powerful; it can identify single proteins in a cell by utilizing a fluorescent labeling method. The new technology is called PALM, photoactive localization microscopy. PALM allows researchers to spot molecules that are only 2 to 25 nanometres apart. The microscopes before PALM were limited by light wavelength which can not distinguish molecules that are less than 200 nanometres apart. PALM, on the other hand, was designed by utilizing optical microscopy and fluorescent labeling. The level of detail that was achieved with PALM can only compare to electron microscopes. The project is still in development with a major negative aspect, using the PALM is extremely time consuming and takes up to seven hours to obtain a complete image. However, scientists at Howard Hughes Medial Institute are very optimistic about the future of the PALM.