(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- JILA researchers have designed a microscope instrument so stable that it can accurately measure the 3D movement of individual molecules over many hours—hundreds of times longer than the current limit measured in seconds.

The technology was designed to track the machinery of biological cells, down to the tiniest bits of DNA, a single “base pair” of nucleotides among the three billion of these chemical units in human genes. But the instrument could be useful well beyond biology, biochemistry, and biophysics, perhaps in manufacturing.

JILA is a partnership of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado at Boulder.

“This technology can actively stabilize two items relative to each other with a precision well below one nanometer at room temperature," JILA/NIST physicist Tom Perkins says. “This level of 3D stability may start to interest the nanomanufacturing world, when they look at making and characterizing things on the single-nanometer scale.”

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