Seeing Specifics

From an aeroplane window, cities below look like busy hives of indistinguishable activity. Microscopes give a comparable view of our cells, showing bustling molecular business but sometimes lacking the clarity to discern key details. Modern imaging techniques show strands of the cytoskeleton linking structures called organelles like roads between buildings, but limitations in resolution or speed cloud the view of intricate molecular behaviour. A new approach pictures behaviour over long periods of time, in multi-colour, fast enough to match microscopic life’s hectic pace. Using it, researchers are already revealing new behaviours, such as how vesicles of essential molecules (yellow) travel along the dynamically changing cytoskeleton (yellow) and endoplasmic reticulum (pink) – another important cell component. The cytoskeleton is crucial to life, and since defects in its structure and behaviour are linked to countless diseases, from the neurological to cardiovascular, getting a better look could be the first step towards new treatments.

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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• Video from work by Yuting Guo and Di Li, and colleagues
• National Laboratory of Biomacromolecules, CAS Center for Excellence in Biomacromolecules, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
• Video/image copyright held by Elsevier 2018
• Published in Cell, November 2018