This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: We reach for brighter, better lighting for sharper pictures, whether we're photographing a puppy or a microscopic cell. In most cases, the light comes from outside the object being photographed.
A recent study explored a different approach, using the cells' own chemical glow to illuminate their internal structures. This new experimental framework, called REID, lets microscopes capture super-sharp, high-resolution details of cell structures by bypassing the need for harsh external lasers that can sometimes damage the cells being imaged. Chemical reactions inside cells are normally very dim, but researchers discovered that swapping a common chemical co-reactant for a biological buffer called Bis-Tris boosted the cellular glow by 1,000 times.
This let them capture sharp, unblurred images in just 20 milliseconds. The REID framework combined computer algorithms with electricity-triggered, chemical and biological (BL) luminescence to sharpen images down to 100 nanometers. The team tested REID's sensitivity, or how little of a biomarker it could still detect, using the cancer marker CEA, and compared it with standard fluorescence microscopy.
They found that although the REID setup was less efficient at producing light, it was eight times more sensitive at detecting the cancer marker than the standard technique. The findings are published in Nature. High-resolution microscopy has brought scientists closer than ever to the complex world of molecular and biological structures, contributing to important advances in medicine, cell biology and neuroscience.
Yet getting a clear view of living cells is not always straightforward. Traditional methods depend on shining external light onto the sample, creating a trade-off between how effectively cells can be imaged, how long they can tolerate exposure without damage and, ultimately, how much detail the resulting image can reveal. Scientists then explored reaction-based luminescence as an alternative for imaging living cells without exposing them to damaging lasers.
It can be obtained via three pathways: electrochemiluminescence (ECL), where light is triggered by electrical and chemical reactions; chemiluminescence (CL), where light is generated by chemical reactions in a solution; and bioluminescence (BL), where light is produced by biological reactions inside living organisms. Despite their advantages, these methods produce relatively few photons. This makes super-resolution imaging much more difficult than with established fluorescence-based methods.
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