Nanoscale freezing leads to better imaging

It's an odd twist. For scientists to determine if a cell is functioning properly, they must destroy it. This is what happens in X-ray fluorescence microscopy when biological specimens are exposed to ionizing radiation, which provides images with a level of detail that conventional microscopes just can't match. This exposure can change what is being imaged in profound ways, possibly giving false accounts of how the cell actually works. To address this issue, researchers created a new probe that freezes cells to "see" at greater detail without damaging the sample.

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