So, this is definitely one of the quirkier papers to come out of my lab, along with Andy Ellington's, a fun project spearheaded by @alex_boulgakov about how to make a microscope using DNA sequencing instead of optics: bit.ly/2Kge0T9 1/
We explored the concept mainly by simulation, with only a first stab at implementing it experimentally, but it was enough to convince us that there were interesting applications. 2/
Imagine our surprise when this lovely paper by Weinstein, Regev, and Zhang was posted just 5 days later, working along similar lines, but fully realized to measure mRNA distributions in cells! Beautiful work! bit.ly/2qTf2eG. 3/
These papers, along with elegant earlier work from Schaus [go.nature.com/2QeaHRW] and Glaser [bit.ly/2OXAQQg] (thanks to @joshuaiglaser for tipping us to this one), all point to the potential of using DNA sequencing... 4/
...to simultaneously read out thousands of intermolecular distances at scales of nanometers to micrometers. From many such measurements, you can triangulate back to determine where the molecules must have been originally located, ergo microscopy-by-sequencing!
