Advancement in Virus Research with an Adaptation of Expansion Microscopy

Expansion microscopy is a cost-effective emerging technology that uses laboratory equipment and commercially available, inexpensive chemicals to physically magnify biological samples (biomolecules of interest) that now include virus cells so that they can be imaged with nanoscale resolution under conventional, diffraction-limited microscopes. A fourfold linear expansion was reported in pure water upon water immersion. A resolution of 65–70 nm was obtained. In addition to the existing superresolution techniques, photoactivated localization microscopy and sculpted light techniques such as structured illumination microscopy and stimulated emission depletion expansion microscopy represents a new type of superresolution sample preparation technique that offers the benefit of fluorophore probe selection.