On Feb. 16, 2022, the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, announced the lab of Matthew Lew, assistant professor of electrical and systems engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, has developed an imaging method that provides an unprecedented look at a molecule as it spins and rolls through liquid, providing the most comprehensive picture yet of molecular dynamics collected using optical microscopes.

The new imaging technology, called a vortex microscope, relies on a particular type of light: a polarized optical vortex. The research was published in a special issue of the Journal of Physical Chemistry B.

“You can bend the light in a certain way so that the photons are spinning along their path,” Lew said. Instead of a straight “beam of light,” this optical vortex is shaped more like a corkscrew. It’s created by shining light through a helical-shaped lens, the top of which is uneven, sloping downward into a spiral.

The microscope also splits the light into two different directions of polarization, providing insight into the direction of the wobble of nano-sized light sources, the molecules in the sample.

Putting it all together, the vortex microscope offers a detailed look into how the surfaces of these amyloid beta fibers interact with each other — how they bounce off each other or attach — and how their surfaces affect whether or not they begin to aggregate.