摘要： Fluorescent probes light the way to cellular detail, but light can also get in the way. Because of the diffraction limit, structures closer to one another than 200 nanometers (nm) or so cannot be discerned. Unless you use probes with super-resolution imaging. These techniques, such as reversible saturable optical linear fluorescence transitions (RESOLFT) or photoactivated localization microscopy (PALM)/stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (STORM), use specialty probes, dyes and fluorescent proteins (FPs) that can switch from dark to light and from one color to another. 'We need the labels in combination with the microscope to overcome the diffraction barrier,' says Stefan Jakobs, who develops probes at University Medical Center G?ttingen and the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry. In structured illumination microscopy (SIM), labs routinely achieve 100-nm resolution, he says. Scientists using stimulated emission depletion microscopy (STED), RESOLFT, PALM or STORM reach beyond 50-nm resolution. In principle, he says, the methods are diffraction unlimited.