Insights in Cell Science â Towards a Quantitative Approach of Fluorescence Microscopy that Unravels Cellular Function

Tel: +27218089196 Fax: +27218083145 Mini Review It is undoubtedly so, the time for fluorescence microscopy in cellular sciences has come, allowing the unraveling of the ‘inside’ of cells and their molecular itinererary in a novel and most precise manner. This is supported by the in 2014 awarded Noble price in chemistry, received for the development of the superresolution fluorescence microscopy techniques photo-activation localization microscopy (PALM), stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (STORM) and stimulated emission depletion (STED). These techniques provide for the first time a platform for subdiffraction molecular imaging complementing the growing arsenal of fluorescence based techniques such as live cell imaging, photo-activation, fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) or fluorescence recovery after photo-bleaching (FRAP). The challenge however remains, not to be drowning in a sea of imagedata, that may be building up to terabytes of data, but to be able to extract meaningful and statistically sound data points, that are suitable to inform on cellular function and dysfunction [1]. More so, it is envisaged to expand our fluorescent toolbox in a manner that not only allows the utilization of fluorescence based image data in a most powerful manner, but also that may contribute towards enabling predictive and preventative medicine [2]. Here we comment on some of the recently developed and employed applications and trends, that enable to powerfully provide “Insights in cell science”, both visually and quantitatively. In doing so, it is hoped to offer a perspective on current applications, trends and challenges that define our present research landscape of cellular imaging. This may assist in better and more carefully designed experimental settings that are most informative and well aligned with the powers of fluorescence microscopy technology.

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