High-speed atomic force microscopy

Abstract

High-speed atomic forcemicroscopy (HS-AFM)has nowbeen established that can capture protein molecules in action at submolecular spatial and sub-100 ms temporal resolution, without disturbing their biological function. In fact, various application studies on proteins have demonstrated this capability and brought important discoveries that cannot be achieved by other approaches.Moreover, recent progress of HS-AFM techniques has been extending its use to the observation of dynamic events occurring in larger samples including live cells and isolated intracellular organelles. This review mostly focuses on various techniques that have led to the achievement of these capabilities of HS-AFM, together with brief descriptions of typical application studies of proteins.