Lit from Below

Why stand under the spotlight when you can let your own light shine instead? Researchers have developed a microscopy approach that observes light produced by chemical or biological reactions in samples themselves, rather than illuminating fluorescent labels with external light. By making labelled structures generate their own light, the team achieved highly sensitive imaging and continuous live cell observation for up to 41 hours. Because the method avoids external illumination, it reduces photobleaching and phototoxicity, and eases some of the trade-offs between resolution and imaging duration in conventional fluorescence microscopy. In one test, the team found an eight-fold improvement in the detection of weak signals (pictured, breast cancer cell-surface marker CEA, detected more sensitively with the electrochemiluminescence approach, pink, than with fluorescence, blue). The method could add a valuable new tool to the microscopist’s arsenal, bringing more secrets of human health and disease to light.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image from work by Wenxin Zhu (朱文鑫), Chi Zhang (张弛) and Jiahui Gui (桂家辉), and colleagues
• Laboratory of Experimental Physical Biology, Department of Chemistry, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial – NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
• Published in Nature, August 2026