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It is with profound sadness that we mourn the recent passing of our dear friend and colleague, Dr. Atrouli Chatterjee. A brilliant postdoctoral associate in the Rothman Lab at Yale University's West Campus, Atrouli was a gifted scientist and an invaluable member of our community.

Professors James Rothman and Joy Hirsch are both distinguished scientists and beloved resident fellows of Branford College—and hosts of monthly science-themed dinners at Mory’s. 

While current microscopy techniques image only a few intracellular molecules at a time, a new technique developed by Yale scientists can help researchers visualize the entire subcellular ecosystem.

Super-resolution microscopy reveals the local distribution of proteins inside cells at the nanoscale but is in practice limited to visualizing only 2 to 3 different proteins in the same cell. FLASH-PAINT breaks this limit and empowers cell biologists to interrogate the complex spatial relationships between an essentially unlimited number of different molecules.

Dr. Schuman talks about why she is inspired by neuroscience and the obstacles that she encountered along her impressive career.

Light microscopy is traditionally limited by diffraction to about 250 nm resolution in the focal plane and more than 500 nm in depth. Super-resolution STED microscopy has overcome this diffraction limit but achieving sub-100 nm super-resolution in 3D in the middle of a tissue section has been impossible due to the optical aberrations the tissue introduces into the optical beam path. Introducing adaptive optics into an isoSTED microscope, an instrument that utilizes two opposing objectives for optimal 3D resolution, allowed the authors to correct for these aberrations. Using this instrument, they were able to obtain for the first time multi-color sub-50 nm 3D resolution images in samples as complex as Drosophila egg chambers and mouse brain tissue sections.