Eric Betzig, Ph.D., a 2014 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and a scientist at Janelia Research Campus (JRC), Howard Hughes Medical Institute, in Ashburn, Va., visited NCI at Frederick on Sept. 10 to present a Distinguished Scientist lecture and discuss the latest high-resolution microscopy techniques.
Betzig co-invented photoactivation localization microscopy (PALM) in collaboration with scientists at NIH. PALM achieves 10-fold improvement in spatial resolution of cells, going from the resolution limit of approximately 250 nm in standard optical microscopy down to approximately 20 nm, thus producing a so-called “super-resolution” image. Spatial resolution refers to the clarity of an image or, in other words, the smallest details that can be observed from an image.