The Ljubljana Faculty of Electrical Engineering has acquired a €1.25 million super-resolution microscope in what is the most expensive single piece of equipment ever purchased by the University of Ljubljana. It will allow researchers to observe cellular processes in even greater detail.

The faculty's dean, Marko Topič, told the Slovenian Press Agency on 28 November that the purchase of this newest microscope was made possible by stable research funding. Half of the cost was covered by the Slovenian Research Agency (ARIS) and the university and the faculty chipped in 25% each.

The Zeiss Elyra 7 Lattice SIM2 microscope allows the observation of living biological cells and the processes taking place in them with a resolution of 60 nanometres, and the observation of fixed slides with biological cells at a resolution of up to 25 nanometres.

The Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the University of Ljubljana presents a new super-resolution microscope. Photo: Faculty of Electrical Engineering

According to Topič, there are only about 50 devices in the world that allow looking at cells at such high resolution.

The two observing approaches are part of a range of super-resolution optical microscopy methods developed over the past two decades that allow optical resolutions below 250 nanometres.

For this breakthrough Eric Betzig of the Howard Hughes Institute in the US, Stefan Hell of the Max Planck Institute in Göttingen, Germany, and William Moerner of Stanford University, US were awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

The state-of-the-art optical microscope "has provided the researchers of the Cybernetics Laboratory and all collaborators with indispensable research equipment for further breakthroughs in the field of electroporation", Topič said.

The new acquisition is expected to lead to even greater interdisciplinary cooperation both within the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and the University of Ljubljana, as well as with other research organisations in the field.