Simultaneous 3D super-resolution fluorescence microscopy and atomic force microscopy: combined SIM and AFM platform for cell imaging

Correlating data from different microscopy techniques holds the potential to discover new facets of signaling events in cellular biology. Here we report for the first time a hardware set-up capable of achieving simultaneous imaging of spatially correlated super-resolution fluorescence microscopy and atomic force microscopy, a feat only obtained until now by fluorescence microscopy set-ups with spatial resolution restricted to the Abbe resolution limit. We hereby remove the need to perform independent measurement and subsequent data averaging required to eliminate cell-to-cell variation in observed signals. We detail system integration, demonstrate system performance and report imaging of sub-resolution fluorescent beads and genome-engineered human bone osteosarcoma epithelial cells.