Seeing the Details

Looking at a tangled mess of computer wires, it can be impossible to tell what’s happening unless key wires are bright, easily seen, colours. Researchers examining the cellular skeleton – the structure that gives cells their shape and movement – have this problem, as the structure is so dense that it’s hard to discern any meaning under a microscope. A new study has found a way to highlight just those sections involved in particular processes, by only illuminating those interacting with other structures, in this case dividing mitochondria (the cell’s power station, blue). As a result, the researchers revealed that this multiplication, a process involved in generating extra energy when needed but also linked to conditions like cancer, is reliant on particular parts of the cytoskeleton (red). By pinpointing precise interactions like this, this tool can help untangle the web of cellular activity, and ultimately troubleshoot when things go wrong.

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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• Image by the Salk Institute, Waitt Advanced Biophotonics Center
• Research by Cara R. Schiavon and Tong Zhang, and colleagues, Waitt Advanced Biophotonics Center, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, CA, USA
• Image copyright held by the original authors
• Published in Nature Methods, August 2020