The technique is helping scientists to look for drugs against the Zika virus.
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
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
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
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
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.
Research Assistant Professor at U-M Life Sciences Institute and Assistant Professor of Biological Chemistry, U-M Medical School, University of Michigan
Research Associate Professor, U-M Life Sciences Institute and and Associate Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology, U-M Medical School, University of Michigan