HOW TO GET 3D RECONSTRUCTION OF SUPRAMOLECULAR ASSEMBLIES FROM 2D SUPER-RESOLUTION LIGHT MICROSCOPY IMAGES?

Super-resolution microscopies enable imaging of supramolecular assemblies in complex environments or in live cells with chemical specificity at spatial resolutions surpassing the diffraction limit. A main limitation remains the statistical analysis of individual images to dissect heterogeneity, and to increase image fidelity and resolution.

Today, the team of Marcelo Nollmann (CBS, Montpellier) and Gaëtan Bellot (IGF, Team. Lebon) describe a single-particle reconstruction method that enables template-free reconstruction of nanomolecular structures from two-dimensional super-resolution projection images to achieve isotropic three-dimensional resolutions.

This research has been recently highlighted in Nature Methods (Nature Methods 14, 942 (2017) doi:10.1038/nmeth.4453).