Expansion microscopy

Among other benefits, ExM allows those small structures to be imaged with a wider range of microscopy techniques.

ExM allows researchers to use standard equipment in identifying small structures, but requires strict procedures to ensure clear results.

After the enlargement of the organism, tissue, or molecule, more standard microscopes can achieve higher resolution imaging of smaller physiological properties.

The primary fields this method is used in are those involved in analyzing biological samples with the addition of immunostaining or fluorescent dyes.

[9] Fluorescent labels are applied after expansion microscopy to make visible dense clusters of proteins and molecules.

Several techniques such as super-resolution microscopy were used, but these required complex hardware and were difficult to apply to human tissues.

This method physically magnified the tissue samples rather than optically, and as a result was able to produce images with high resolution.

These high quality images of tissues served as a turning point in diagnostic and medical expansion microscopy.

Applying expansion microscopy on microarrays containing specimens from various organs, such as breast, prostate, lung, colon, pancreas, kidney, liver, and ovary, including normal and cancer-containing tissues, enabled the diagnostic and the examination of cellular network of diseased state tissues.

This imaging reveals sub-diffraction limit sized features of the intermediate filaments keratin and vimentin, critical in the epithelial mesenchymal transition, cancer progression and initiation of metastasis.

[11] In the future, after further development of this technique, observation of nanoscale morphology of biomolecules and samples from wide range of human organs is anticipated to be provided.

Many of the questions surrounding neuroscience attempt to answer and understand molecules and wiring in neural circuits.

Through the use of ExM technique, neuroscientists can more easily map images of synapses, cells, and neural circuits.

Because ExM enlarges the physical sample, it relieves researchers from the need to purchase an expensive microscopy equipment such as electron microscopes for super-resolution studies.

Failure to complete these steps can result in the breaking of the cell or uneven expansion, distorting the image beyond use.