Brief Kiss Goodbye

A lot of what goes on inside life is hidden – even proteins made to shine in our cells’ darkness hold details that are challenging for eager microscopists to tease apart. Here a new super-resolution technique reveals surprising clues though the haze. Dubbed single-frame super-resolution microscopy, the technique uses computer algorithms to pull biological details or 'signal’ from surrounding ‘noise’ using the brightest features to guide the reconstruction of high-resolution images and videos. Researchers hope the technique can be modified to peer at tiny structures across different species. Inside this human cell, we see mitochondria (highlighted in purple) meeting momentarily to exchange chemicals. This “kiss and run” behaviour occurs in life on many scales, where brief pauses in contact are more “until we meet again” than “goodbye”.

Written by John Ankers

John Ankers

Writer

A former researcher in systems biology, John is now an online biology tutor and professional coach supporting the wellbeing of scientists and NHS professionals. He's writing, too, of course.

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• Video adapted from work by Rong Chen and colleagues
• Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China
• Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Nature Communications, May 2023