Nov. 24, 2010

Single-molecule Microscope

Cells have surface proteins, called cadherins, that help them stick together. Different kinds of cells have different kinds of cadherins. The typical tools for observing and measuring those proteins focus on tens of thousands of them at a time - providing data on the average molecule in a sample, but not on a single molecule. Sivasankar, an Iowa State University assistant professor of physics and astronomy and an associate of the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory, wanted to study them one at a time. more