Diminished Capacity

Magnetic Resonance Force Microscopy

In the future, when we design molecular machines, it will be helpful to be able to see the arrangement of the atoms in the individual molecules we are working with. Until now, that's been rather difficult. Currently, to determine the three dimensional structure of, say, a protein, we have to resort to fairly crude and time consuming methods like X-ray crystallography. However, things may be changing.

When I was a kid, they told us things in science classes like "no one will ever seen an atom because they are too small". Then, of course, in 1981, some smart folks invented Scanning Tunneling Microscopy ("STM") and suddenly people could take pictures of atoms. Soon we had Atomic Force Microscopy ("AFM") too.

Neither STM nor AFM are capable of doing things like showing us the detailed structure of a macromolecule like a protein, but now another variation on the theme has been invented, Magnetic Resonance Force Microscopy. It is a cross between Magnetic Resonance Imaging and scanning microscopes like the STM.

The first devices seem to be capable of detecting spin flips in individual electrons, and upping the sensitivity by a few orders of magnitude seems straightforward. This could be a major breakthrough. We may soon be able to directly image macromolecules. The impact of that capability on chemistry, biology and molecular nanotechnology would be huge.