In the Detail

To get the lay of the land, you need to be able to see the whole picture, the roads, the houses, the green spaces. It’s a similar story when imaging cells and it’s why researchers often combine fluorescence microscopy of labelled proteins with label-free microscopy, such as atomic force microscopy (AFM), which captures the broader cell environment. However, AFM deforms cell shapes, losing accurate information along the depth of the cell. Researchers now present an alternative to AFM that better preserves cell shape – scanning ion-conductance microscopy (SICM). Used alongside cell dyes and a type of live-cell imaging called super-resolution optical fluctuation imaging (SOFI), the team successfully matched SICM and SOFI images to create intricate 2D and 3D cell models. For example, they captured highly detailed 2D images (pictured) of cell architecture proteins, tubulin (green, top left) and actin (red, lower left), in cells in a dish. This provides another tool to investigate cellular processes in greater detail.

Written by Lux Fatimathas

Lux Fatimathas

Writer

Having pursued science through a career in research, communications and publishing, she is currently a writer and editor for a healthcare marketing agency and also juggles freelance science writing.

• Image from work by Vytautas Navikas and Samuel M. Leitao, and colleagues
• Institute of Bioengineering, School of Engineering, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Nature Communications, July 2021