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Articles on Electron microscopy

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Imaging the proteins on the surface of HCV has been challenging because of the virus’s shape-shifting nature. Juan Gaertner/Science Photo Library via Getty Images

Scientists uncovered the structure of the key protein for a future hepatitis C vaccine – here’s how they did it

Using a Nobel Prize-winning technique called cryo-EM, researchers were able to identify potential areas on the hepatitis C virus that a vaccine could target.
The electron microscope’s resolution has radically improved in the last few years, from mostly showing shapeless blobs (left) in 2013 to now being able to visualise proteins at atomic resolution (right) in the present. Martin Högbom/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

Life frozen in time under an electron microscope gets a Nobel Prize

The 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to scientists who developed a way to study biological molecules under an electron microscope.
Cryo-electron microscopy resolution continues to improve. Veronica Falconieri, Sriram Subramaniam, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health

Chilled proteins and 3-D images: The cryo-electron microscopy technology that just won a Nobel Prize

The 2017 Nobel Prize in chemistry goes to three scientists who revolutionized biochemistry by inventing a technology that can image the molecules of life without destroying them.
Without electrons there would be no electron microscopes, and therefore no close-ups like this image of pollen. Heiti Paves/Wikimedia Commons

Small world: does ecology reach all the way down to the subatomic scale?

The advent of electron microscopy and nanobiology has moved our appreciation of the living world to unprecedentedly small scales – with entirely new benefits and potential pitfalls to consider.
A butterfly’s wing viewed through an optical microscope (left) and the scanning helium microscope (right). University of Newcastle

New helium microscope reveals startling details without frying the sample

A new scanning helium microscope offers the potential for capturing images with finer resolution than optical microscopes, but without damaging samples as with electron microscopes.

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