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Electron Microscopes Close To Imaging Individual Atoms
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Science: Today's digital photos are far more vivid than just a few years ago, thanks to a steady stream of advances in optics, detectors, and software. Similar advances have also improved the ability of machines called cryo-electron microscopes (cryo-EMs) to see the Lilliputian world of atoms and molecules. Now, researchers report that they've created the highest ever resolution cryo-EM image, revealing a druglike molecule bound to its protein target at near atomic resolution. The resolution is so sharp that it rivals images produced by x-ray crystallography, long the gold standard for mapping the atomic contours of proteins. This newfound success is likely to dramatically help drugmakers design novel medicines for a wide variety of conditions.
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So does this new electron microscope technology mean that these pharmaceutical companies will finally be able to create medication to treat the most heinous of diseases, the dreadful condition known as micropenis?
It does make sense, though. It's hard to test medications and to determine their effects on micropenis when the micropenis in question is too small to see with traditional microscopes. Being able to finally see the micropenises they're trying to treat will surely help these researchers create a cure much faster.
Scientists are proud to announce a new echelon of understanding that will finally allow humans to see the microscopic penis of people who yell, "First Post!" on Slashdot.
Now we can photograph CmdrTaco's nanopenis
Drugs aren't cheap to make, you know. We need to use electron microscopes and everything! You will be going into debt to fill your next prescription. Lots of debt.
So does this new electron microscope technology mean that these pharmaceutical companies will finally be able to create medication to treat the most heinous of diseases, the dreadful condition known as micropenis?
Growing up and having to look at the tinker-toy looking molecule models and the overly simplistic models of atoms and their electrons, I think eventually, this will allow physical chemists and physicists to directly observe what happens at that level and maybe even change some theories. Just imagine if or when they'll be able to see how the atoms bind to one another - maybe not with an electron microscope but maybe another technology? It's one thing to deduce how things work (Pauling was beyond genius), but to observe it will be a whole new level. At the very least, I envy future science students in being able to see an actual image of what they are studying!
While cryo-EM is really a big step forward the summary make it sound like it's the first time EMs can image atoms, that is not really the case at all. HRTEM (high resolution tunneling electron microscopes) have even better resolution that 0.2 nm, one order of magnitude better even ( eg. http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.096101 ). It's also worth noting that the applications and use cases are very different for cryo-EM and HRTEM.
This is not a worthy story. Cryo-EM is a fast growing, exciting field but higher resolution electron microscopes that what this article trumpets have been available for years. For example, the TEAM microscope built in 2008 at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab has a resolution of 50 pm:
http://foundry.lbl.gov/facilities/ncem/expertise.html#team1
I personally saw individual gold atoms deposited as a nanobridge on a graphene substrate. In 2010.
The ability to image the atomic structure of an individual (fragile and 3-d) protein is still notable and the article gets this mostly right.
But, yes: the 1986 Nobel prize went to developers of the TEM and STM that had both already achieved atomic resolution MANY years before. The first microscope to allow atomic resolution was the field ion microscope (in the 1950s!), but the inventor had died before the Nobel prizes were awarded.
When can I order one?
You are an anonymous coward inpersonating her. You are probably being midcontrolled by Italian toads from outer space right now. I laugh at you.
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No? Why not?
Surely not because their average IQ is 70?
Let's just allow millions of them into formerly ALL WHITE countries, what could possibly go wrong? After all, white countries are BETTER than all the countries in Africa, aren't they, otherwise why are you so desperate to get millions of Africans into white countries? To make their lives worse?
I imagined a Beowulf cluster of atoms, and it looked like, well, a molecule.
Table-ized A.I.
In case you missed the link, 2.2 Ã... resolution cryo-EM structure of Î-galactosidase in complex with a cell-permeant inhibitor
Right now it is paywalled but as the authors are all NIH employees it shouldn't remain that way for long. If you really want to see the article sooner than that, your local public library likely subscribes to Science
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The technique is not scalable because you have to obtain permission from each atom to use their image.
Stick the subject line into a search machine and look at all of the pictures of single atoms.
I remember many many years ago of the atoms at the end of a pin.
A link to images https://www.google.com/search?...
He was interested in imaging the Calcium, it should be obvious that the other elements I mentioned would be a bit harder, but it may not to some readers or may be seen as an opening for nitpickers to prove some sort of point. By that point in time I think Tungsten and other relatively large atoms could be resolved so that's what I meant by "unlike larger atoms"