A new optical microscopy approach opens the door to better observations in molecular biology

Researchers from the Institut Pasteur and CNRS have set up a new optical microscopy approach that combines two recent imaging techniques in order to visualize molecular assemblies without affecting their biological functions, at a resolution 10 times better than that of traditional microscopes. Using this approach, they were able to observe the AIDS virus and its capsids (containing the HIV genome) within cells at a scale of 30 nanometres, for the first time with light. This newly developed approach represents a significant advance in molecular biology, opening the door to less invasive and more precise analyses of pathogenic microorganisms present in human host cells. This study is already published in the Electronic Edition of PNAS.

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