The power of super-resolution microscopy in modern biomedical science

Super-resolution microscopy (SRM) technology that breaks the diffraction limit has revolutionized the field of cell biology since its appearance, which enables researchers to visualize cellular structures with nanometric resolution, multiple colors and single-molecule sensitivity. With the flourishing development of hardware and the availability of novel fluorescent probes, the impact of SRM has already gone beyond cell biology and extended to nanomedicine, material science and nanotechnology, and remarkably boosted important breakthroughs in these fields. In this review, we will mainly highlight the power of SRM in modern biomedical science, discussing how these SRM techniques revolutionize the way we understand cell structures, biomaterials assembly and how assembled biomaterials interact with cellular organelles, and finally their promotion to the clinical pre-diagnosis. Moreover, we also provide an outlook on the current technical challenges and future improvement direction of SRM. We hope this review can provide useful information, inspire new ideas and propel the development both from the perspective of SRM techniques and from the perspective of SRM's applications.