Harvard University has signed a licensing agreement with Nikon Corporation covering the use of Stochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscopy (STORM) technology developed in the lab of Xiaowei Zhuang, PhD, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. Under terms of the agreement, Nikon will manufacture STORM-enabled microscopy systems and market them with the N-STORM name. Optical microscopy is one of the most widely used imaging methods in biomedical research. However, the spatial resolution of optical microscopy — classically limited by the diffraction of light to several hundred nanometers — is substantially larger than typical molecular length scales in cells, leaving many biological investigations beyond the reach of light microscopy.<\/p>\n
The STORM technology overcomes these limitations, allowing life science researchers to observe tissues and cells more clearly. STORM uses photo-switchable fluorescent probes to temporally separate the otherwise spatially overlapping images of individual molecules, allowing the construction of two- and three-dimensional, multicolor fluorescence images of molecular complexes, cells, and tissues. The STORM fluorescence microscopy allows molecular interactions in cells and cell-cell interactions in tissues to be imaged at the nanometer scale. The N-STORM Super Resolution microscope system will be available for delivery in May 2010.<\/p>\n