Metal-induced energy transfer imaging

Abstract

Super-resolution microscopy has seen a tremendous development over the last two decades. It has opened new perspectives for the application of fluorescence microscopy in the life sciences. Achieving a spatial resolution beyond the diffraction limit of light allowed one to observe many biological structures that are not resolvable in conventional fluorescence microscopy. However, despite recent development of super-resolution fluorescence microscopy techniques that allowed for squeezing the lateral resolution down to tens of nanometers, the much less axial resolution remains a key limiting factor for applications where z-sectioning of a sample is needed. In this chapter, we present the recently developed fluorescence imaging method that is called metal-induced energy transfer. It combines unprecedented nanometer resolution with technical simplicity that allows life science researchers to use it with standard microscopes. We discuss basic principle of the method, its theoretical background, and its applications for imaging of various sub-cellular structures.