4th CeBiTec Symposium BioImaging, Bielefeld, Germany 25-27 August 2009

Microscopy has contributed immensely to the development of modern biology since 1665 when Robert Hooke published his book "Micrographia" depicting a large number of microscopical sketches and Antoni van Leeuwenhoek simultaneously built the first microscope with a magnification of 260-times. Our present perception of a cell is thankfully greatly owing to microscopical analyses. Inspite of a certain regression in new fields of applications, microscopy itself has seen a 300 year continual development. In recent years there is a renaissance of microscopy with totally novel innovative and interdisciplinary approaches. These correspond to the new developments in the fields of biology, physics and bioinformatics. A major breakthrough in biology is the discovery of the green fluorescent protein (GFP) which enables the viewing of single proteins in living cells. The nobel prize for chemistry in 2008 was awarded to Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie and Roger Tsien for the "Discovery and the further Development of the green fluorescence protein". Another important innovation in the field of physics has rendered the generally accepted impossibility of the limits of magnification as possible by the german scientist Stefan Hell from Göttingen. Stefan Hell received the german "Zukunftspreis" in 2006, in 2008 the "Staatspreis" of the state of Lower Saxony and the "Leibnizpreis" of the german research community (DFG) for "Light microscopy with unknown clarity". These methods enable the visualisation of nanoscopic structures in living cells. Similar high magnification microscopic plus latest electonmicroscopic techniques are also being developed in the department of physics at the the University of Bielefeld. A third building block which leads from microscopy to imaging is the automatic image processing using informatics. This boosts the importance of microscopy in the field of functional genome research. Together with the green fluorescence protein , high magnification microscopy and automated image processing it is possible to analyse life processes in unknown geometrical and time related magnification dimensions.