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congratulations to Eric, Stefan and W.E. for Nobel Prize in Chemistry

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2014/press.html


  Press Release

8 October 2014

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 
<http://www.nobelprize.org/redirect/links_out/prizeawarder.php?from=/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2014/press.html&object=kva&to=http://www.kva.se/en/> 
has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2014 to

*Eric Betzig*
Janelia Farm Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, 
VA, USA,

*Stefan W. Hell*
Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, and German 
Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany

and

*William E. Moerner*
Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

/“for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy”/


    Surpassing the limitations of the light microscope

For a long time optical microscopy was held back by a presumed 
limitation: that it would never obtain a better resolution than half the 
wavelength of light. Helped by fluorescent molecules the Nobel Laureates 
in Chemistry 2014 ingeniously circumvented this limitation. Their 
ground-breaking work has brought optical microscopy into the nanodimension.

In what has become known as nanoscopy, scientists visualize the pathways 
of individual molecules inside living cells. They can see how molecules 
create synapses between nerve cells in the brain; they can track 
proteins involved in Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s diseases 
as they aggregate; they follow individual proteins in fertilized eggs as 
these divide into embryos.

It was all but obvious that scientists should ever be able to study 
living cells in the tiniest molecular detail. In 1873, the microscopist 
Ernst Abbe stipulated a physical limit for the maximum resolution of 
traditional optical microscopy: it could never become better than 0.2 
micrometres. *Eric Betzig*, *Stefan W. Hell* and *William E. Moerner* 
are awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2014 for having bypassed this 
limit. Due to their achievements the optical microscope can now peer 
into the nanoworld.

Two separate principles are rewarded. One enables the method /stimulated 
emission depletion (STED) microscopy/, developed by Stefan Hell in 2000. 
Two laser beams are utilized; one stimulates fluorescent molecules to 
glow, another cancels out all fluorescence except for that in a 
nanometre-sized volume. Scanning over the sample, nanometre for 
nanometre, yields an image with a resolution better than Abbe’s 
stipulated limit.

Eric Betzig and William Moerner, working separately, laid the foundation 
for the second method, /single-molecule microscopy/. The method relies 
upon the possibility to turn the fluorescence of individual molecules on 
and off. Scientists image the same area multiple times, letting just a 
few interspersed molecules glow each time. Superimposing these images 
yields a dense super-image resolved at the nanolevel. In 2006 Eric 
Betzig utilized this method for the first time.

Today, nanoscopy is used world-wide and new knowledge of greatest 
benefit to mankind is produced on a daily basis.


//

My thanks to the Nobel committee for revealing what W.E. is.

-- 



George McNamara, Ph.D.
Single Cells Analyst
L.J.N. Cooper Lab
University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
Houston, TX 77054
Tattletales http://works.bepress.com/gmcnamara/42