نوبل شیمی 2014 Chemistry Nobel Prize—Seeing Single Molecules
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry recognizes the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy. Much of this field can be traced back to the first detection of single molecules in solids.
The 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry recognizes the work of Eric Bertzig, Stefan W. Hell, and William E. Moerner, who developed techniques in super-resolved fluorescence microscopy. One of the first breakthroughs in this field was the optical detection of a single molecule inside a solid crystal by Moerner in 1989. Previously, single molecules were thought to be optically undetectable.
When researchers study a particular molecule, they typically collect data from a large number of those molecules, but this collective approach hides individual variations that can exist between molecules. A protein, for example, is constantly changing shape, so a snapshot of many proteins will be an average over all those different forms. Environment can also affect the way molecules behave. If a certain molecule is dispersed sparsely throughout a solid matrix, the frequency of a single line in its spectrum will vary from one molecule to the next because each one is influenced by different local defects in its immediate environment. This spread in frequencies, which is called inhomogeneous broadening, has been a problem for precision measurements. “Moerner had the revolutionary idea to eliminate inhomogeneity effects completely by just addressing one single molecule,” says Lothar Kador, Moerner’s postdoctoral associate at the time, who is now at the University of Bayreuth in Germany.
The single molecule in Moerner’s 1989 paper was a hydrocarbon called pentacene. Moerner and Kador performed absorption spectroscopy on a low concentration of pentacene molecules incorporated in an organic crystal and chilled to near absolute zero. At these temperatures, the pentacene molecules should have a very narrow absorption line at 593 nanometers, but this line is broadened by 1000 times due to inhomogeneities in the crystal. Although such broadening is usually a nuisance, Moerner and Kador found a way to use the effect to detect a single molecule. They tuned a laser to a frequency in the tail at the edge of the spectral line, where the number of absorbing molecules was expected to drop to one or very close to one.
To identify the weak signal from a single pentacene molecule, the researchers used two types of “modulation” that reduce the noisy background: The first was frequency-modulation (FM) spectroscopy, in which the laser frequency oscillates over a small range. The second modulation was an oscillation in the position of the absorption peak, which the researchers induced by applying either a time-varying electric field or a time-varying stress from ultrasound waves. Under this double modulation, the spectral signature of a single pentacene molecule was a combination of peaks and dips in the shape of a W. The team detected several of these W-shaped features at different frequencies. To verify that the observed signature was due to a single molecule, Moerner and Kador increased or decreased the modulation frequency of their FM technique. In response, the W feature expanded or contracted—as expected for a single molecule—rather than changing in a random way, as would be expected if the feature came from several absorbing molecules with a range of central frequencies.
The physics community wasn’t entirely convinced at first, says Michel Orrit of Leiden University in the Netherlands. The data contained a lot of noise, and many people still had doubts that single molecule observation was even possible with light. Most skeptics were converted a year later, however, when Orrit and a collaborator redid the experiment, but instead of absorption they detected the fluorescent emission from a single pentacene molecule [1]. Fluorescence became the method of choice in single molecule detection, since it typically generates less background noise than absorption studies, Orrit says.
Years later, researchers discovered fluorescent proteins whose emission could be turned on and off. Methods soon developed in which a complex structure, like a cell membrane, is labeled (or “tagged”) with a large number of these beacon-like molecules. By turning on the proteins only a handful at a time, biologists precisely map out the location of each tag. They then combine these different maps into a super-resolution image of the full structure. “When we started our work, we did not plan to build a super-resolving microscope,” Kador says. “But in the course of time it turned out that single-molecule detection is able to achieve exactly this.”
superintelligence paths dangers strategies
Author Nick Bostrom
اطلاعات بیشتر از سایت آمازون
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"Nick Bostrom makes a persuasive case that the future impact of AI is perhaps the most important issue the human race has ever faced. Instead of passively drifting, we need to steer a course. Superintelligence charts the submerged rocks of the future with unprecedented detail. It marks the beginning of a new era." -- Stuart Russell, Professor of Computer Science, University of California, Berkley
"Those disposed to dismiss an 'AI takeover' as science fiction may think again after reading this original and well-argued book." -- Martin Rees, Past President, Royal Society
"a magnificent conception ... it ought to be required reading on all philosophy undergraduate courses, by anyone attempting to build AIs and by physicists who think there is no point to philosophy." -- Brian Clegg, Popular Science
"There is no doubting the force of [Bostrom's] arguments...the problem is a research challenge worthy of the next generation's best mathematical talent. Human civilisation is at stake." -- Clive Cookson, Financial Times
"This superb analysis by one of the world's clearest thinkers tackles one of humanity's greatest challenges: if future superhuman artificial intelligence becomes the biggest event in human history, then how can we ensure that it doesn't become the last?" -- Professor Max Tegmark, MIT
Newfound Molecule in Space Dust Offers Clues to Life's Origins
The discovery of a strangely branched organic molecule in the depths of interstellar space has capped a decades-long search for the carbon-bearing stuff.
The molecule in question — iso-propyl cyanide (i-C3H7CN) — was spotted in Sagittarius B2, a huge star-making cloud of gas and dust near the center of the Milky Way, about 27,000 light-years from the sun. The discovery suggests that some of the key ingredients for life on Earth could have originated in interstellar space.

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