Recent research in cell biology highlights groundbreaking results. An international team of researchers have recently established a tool they developed to study the mechanics of the cell. The tool can be used to study the inner forces of the cell, for example, the stretching of the nuclear membrane. The microscopic force sensor, only about 0.00002 mm long, is constructed of exotic ingredients such as spider web protein parts, fluorescent proteins from jellyfish, and antibodies from alpaca. In addition, the multidisciplinary team of researchers has developed further the sensitivity of super-resolution microscopy technique.
In many cases, cells are very active in their movement and serve as power generators. The ability of cells to produce physical forces is one of the basic functions of the body. When running, for example, the forces generated in the cells cause the muscles to contract and the breath to work.
According to Ihalainen, the force sensor, which is only about twenty nanometres in size, can be easily generalised to a wide range of cell biology research and various target proteins. With the help of the protein biosensor, forces can be measured, for example, in the nuclear membrane, between different proteins, or generally in the cytoskeleton of the cell. It allows the mechanics of the cell to be transformed into visible form for the first time.
The resolution of light microscopy is limited since the details of small structures in the sample are blurred due to lens-light interactions. However, different techniques of super-resolution microscopy allow for the separation of very small details. One of these techniques is so-called expansion microscopy, the principle of which is to physically enlarge a subject, e.g. a cell, and thus look at the tiny things inside it.
"In practise, what we did was to pump more fluorescent molecules to the target proteins as if we were adding reflectors. The simple and easy method greatly improved the resolution and contrast of the image. Noise was also computationally removed from the images, which further increased the image sharpness," he mentions.
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