Scientists are using tiny mirrors to capture the most detail

Cells come in all 3D shapes and sizes, but when we look at them through a microscope, we only see a 2D image.

That’s okay for creating a basic image of the structures, but it’s not enough when you want to dig deeper, because although two things in a cell might be far apart, when scientists look through a microscope in 2D, they can appear to be right on top of each other.

An international collaboration of researchers have been looking for a way to overcome this problem, and they think they've found one - using tiny mirrors to create a 3D view of cells.

The researchers, from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) in Australia, Peking University in China, and the Georgia Institute of Technology in the US, say that although this technology is simple, it should allow for scientists to gather much better information about the third dimension of cells.

"This simple technology is allowing us to see the details of cells that have never been seen before," said one of the researchers, Dayong Jin from UTS.

"A single cell is about 10 micrometres; inside that is a nuclear core about 5 micrometres, and inside that are tiny holes, called the 'nuclear pore complex' that as a gate regulates the messenger bio-molecules, but measures between one-50th and one-20th of a micrometre. With this super-resolution microscopy we are able to see the details of those tiny holes."

The new technology, dubbed MEANS (mirror-enhanced, axial-narrowing, super-resolution) microscopy, works by capturing layers of the cell at different focal points, giving the researchers the ability to see the changes in layers of the cell.

The process works by growing cells on small, custom-made mirrors. A glass cover slide is placed on top of the cells, and then the mirror can be added in place of a usual slide in a confocal or wide-field microscope.