Expansion microscopy (ExM) is a physical form of magnification that increases the effective resolving power of any microscope. Here, we describe the fundamental principles of ExM, as well as how recently developed ExM variants build upon and apply those principles. We examine applications of ExM in cell and developmental biology for the study of nanoscale structures as well as ExM's potential for scalable mapping of nanoscale structures across large sample volumes. Finally, we explore how the unique anchoring and hydrogel embedding properties enable postexpansion molecular interrogation in a purified chemical environment. ExM promises to play an important role complementary to emerging live-cell imaging techniques, because of its relative ease of adoption and modification and its compatibility with tissue specimens up to at least 200 μm thick.

中文翻译：

---

扩展显微镜：可扩展且方便的超分辨率显微镜。

扩展显微镜（ExM）是一种物理放大形式，可以提高任何显微镜的有效分辨能力。在这里，我们描述了ExM的基本原理，以及最近开发的ExM变体如何建立并应用这些原理。我们研究了ExM在细胞和发育生物学中的应用，以研究纳米尺度的结构，以及ExM在大样本量中纳米尺度结构的可扩展制图的潜力。最后，我们探索了独特的锚固和水凝胶包埋特性如何在纯化的化学环境中实现扩建后的分子审讯。ExM有望对新兴的活细胞成像技术起到重要的补充作用，因为它相对容易采用和修改，并且与厚度至少为200μm的组织标本兼容。