Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Department of NanoBiophotonics, Göttingen, Germany

The 2nd meeting of the Leica Super-resolution User club was held from September 25 to 27, 2012 in collaboration with the Science for Life Laboratory at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden. With a mixture of engaging talks by key experts in the field of super-resolution microscopy and stimulating discussion sessions, the meeting proved as popular as last year’s event, attracting a wide range of scientists interested in both confocal and widefield super-resolution and sample preparation techniques.

To explore the most intricate structures of the brain in order to decipher how it functions – Stefan Hell’s team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen has made a significant step closer to this goal. Using the STED microscopy developed by Hell, the scientists have, for the first time, managed to record detailed live images inside the brain of a living mouse.

The first European Super-resolution User Club meeting took place from October 27 to 29 in Göttingen, Germany. Prof. Stefan Hell, the inventor of the STED technology, has hosted this first meeting. The user club is aimed at pioneering researchers from the European scientific community, who are early adopters and developers of super-resolution techniques.

In 1873, Ernst Abbe developed a theory that defined the limit of resolution of the light microscope. Following suit from astronomy, Abbe defined resolution as the ability to resolve, as separate, two point sources of light. The Abbe limit of 200–300 nm is based upon the ability of the light microscope to collect only a subset of spatial frequencies and the physiological properties of the human eye.