Ability to See Single Molecules Gets Chemistry Nobel Prize

Three microscope specialists have won the 2014 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Stefan W. Hell, Eric Betzig, and William E. Moerner, for developing new techniques that increase the power of light microscopy. This breakthrough, that was thought to be impossible since 1873 when microscopist Ernst Abbe wrote an equation setting the bottom limit of the light microscope, will allow scientists to see molecules in action within a living cell, watch DNA replication, and follow the actions of proteins involved in Huntington’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. It was thought before that “for electron microscopes to go smaller, you had to kill the cell, which made it impossible to see anything in action”, said Sven Lidin, chair of the Nobel chemistry committee and a chemist at Lund University in Sweden. The new Nobelists’ work means “reactions can be studied as they happen, not as the end result but actually as they take place. It opens entirely new possibilities for chemistry and for biochemistry.” Tom Barton, president of the American Chemical Society and a professor at Iowa State University, said the winners’ work, “allowed us the see the previously unseen; lifting the veil on bacteria, viruses, proteins, and small molecules.”

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2014/10/08/ability-to-see-single-molecules-gets-chemistry-nobel/

Submitted by Marc Longe