NUGGET

3D optical microscopic tracking has been long pursued by biologists and material scientists as it provides valuable insights that are unavailable in conventional 2D imaging. We developed a 3D tracking technique that can track single molecules in 3D with high temporal and spatial resolutions.

We demonstrated the 3D tracking capability of Parallax by tracking myosin X motors walking along actin filaments suspended across microfabricated structures.

Parallax 3D tracking reveals that myosin X walks in a right-handed helical path along actin filaments

Parallax can also provide 3D profiles of more complex shapes such as actin filaments. Shown here are the 3D profiles of 4 segments of actins (color contours in the right image) that cross over microfeatures