UC Berkeley

Unveiling the nanoscale structural mechanism is believed to be key to understanding the nature of biology. In the last 15 years, the advancement of super-resolution microscopy, especially STochastic Optical Remonstration Microscopy (STORM) or Single Molecule Localization Microscopy (SMLM), equivalently brought the resolution of optical microscopy down to ~10nm and thus enabled many disrupting biological discoveries. In this dissertation, I initially show how the spatial resolution of optical microscopy could be largely increased through the development of photo-switchable fluorophores and a single molecule localization algorithm. Then, I use two interesting examples to show how STORM could provide a new angle in fundamental cell biology research. First, I illustrate the discovery of a novel structural model of the tubular endoplasmic reticulum as well as its regulation mechanism by curvature formation protein, Rtn4, and luminal bridge, Climp63. Second, I apply STORM to demonstrate the actin-associated vesicle scission mechanism of clathrin-coated pits during eukaryote endocytosis. In the last Chapter, I make some future outlook the in the recent development of functional super-resolution microscopy, which not only achieves higher spatial resolution but also encode useful physicochemical insight in the image.