Fixed Energy

Like filming the bustle of a city at night, life inside a cell can look like chaos. A static snapshot allows us to make sense of the surroundings, to spot subtle details, and perhaps some order in the noise. In these mammalian cells, we see clusters of mitochondria, the tiny organelles that churn out cellular energy, a molecule called ATP. Among other jobs, mitochondria also heat our cells from the inside – each is around a billion times smaller than a nuclear power facility. While watching organelles in motion has its advantages, here a new fluorescent stain reveals fine details in fixed cells – those frozen in time with chemicals – potentially yielding different perspectives on these tiny power stations in health and disease.

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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• Image from work by Jingting Chen and colleagues
• College of Future Technology, Institute of Molecular Medicine, National Biomedical Imaging Center, Beijing Key Laboratory of Cardiometabolic Molecular Medicine, Peking University, Beijing, China
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), April 2024