Life is entirely made up of cells smaller by several orders of magnitude than a grain of salt, and their seemingly simple structures hide the complex molecular activity that enables them to perform the functions that sustain life.

Scientists have begun to visualize this activity to a degree of detail they were previously unable to.
 

Biological structures can be imagined either by starting at the level of the entire organism or by starting at the level of individual atoms and working upward.

A gap in resolution 

However, a gap in resolution has been discovered between the smaller structures of the cell, such as the cytoskeleton that supports the cell’s shape, and its larger structures, such as ribosomes that manufacture proteins in cells.

Seeing these details at the living level is important for the ability to understand how individual components work together in the cellular environment.

New tools are steadily closing this gap, and continued development of a particular technique—cryo-electron tomography, or cryo-ET—has the potential to deepen researchers' methods of studying and understanding how cells function in health and disease.

How living organisms work 

Jeremy Berg, a professor of biology and computational systems, senior vice president for science strategy and planning at the University of Pittsburgh, former editor-in-chief of the journal Science, and a researcher in the topic, says: “We study large protein structures that have been difficult to visualize for decades, and we have witnessed remarkable advances in developing tools that can identify biological structures in detail. Just as it becomes easier to understand how complex systems work when you know what they look like, understanding how biological structures fit together in the cell is the key to understanding how living organisms function.”