Blueprints for a Simple and Inexpensive Single-Molecule Microscope Published

A team of scientists from the University of Sheffield has published the blueprints for a cost-effective confocal smFRET platform they say they built for a tenth of the cost of commercially available equipment. Their paper, published today in Nature Communications, provides labs with the build instructions and software needed to run the microscope

The microscope, called the smfBox, is capable of single-molecule measurements allowing scientists to look at one molecule at a time rather than generating an average result from bulk samples and works just as well as commercially available instruments. This method is currently only available at a few specialist labs throughout the world due to the cost of commercially available microscopes.

smfBox was built with simplicity in mind so that researchers interested in biological problems can use it with little training, and the lasers have been shielded in such a way that it can be used in normal lighting conditions.

Dr Tim Craggs, the lead academic on the project from the University of Sheffield, said: "We wanted to democratise single-use molecule measurements to make this method available for many labs, not just a few labs throughout the world. This work takes what was a very expensive, specialist piece of kit, and gives every lab the blueprint and software to build it for themselves, at a fraction of the cost.”