To fully understand how cells work, scientists need to know how their moving parts relate to one another in space and time. However, because of their size and the amount of data involved, visualizing cellular structures in three dimensions has proven difficult. Now, in a trio of new studies, two teams of molecular scientists have aimed to make it easy for everyone to see inside cells. By incorporating painstakingly collected experimental data and partnering with computational biologists, they are bringing 3D visualizations of organelles and chromosomes into sharper focus.
The researchers are also making their 3D data, published in separate studies in early October, freely available for anyone to explore in order to allow researchers around the globe to probe their own questions about how cellular form impacts function. As Karissa Sanbonmatsu, a structural biologist at Las Alamos National Laboratory and coauthor on one of the papers, puts it: “We’re ...
