4. Conclusion

The frequency of annual publications concerning the study of DNA and DNA/protein complexes has been steadily increasing since the mid-1990s. Following in-depth work on the physico-chemical mechanisms governing the adsorption of DNA onto mica, the observation of biological phenomena by AFM is becoming increasingly relevant, and helps to avoid the few haphazard interpretations to be found in some publications from the late 1990s.

The prospects for improving the technique in our area of interest are based on two points:

• the widespread use of microlevers with even finer tips to increase the lateral resolution of AFM images. Studies using, for example, carbon nanotubes grafted onto the microlevier for imaging biomolecules are moving in this direction