Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • NEWS AND VIEWS

Nanometre-scale imaging and AI reveal the interior of whole cells

Efforts to generate nanoscale-resolution images of cell interiors have gained ground through the development and refinement of a microscopy method. The data sets are publicly available as resources for further discoveries.
  1. Jason R. Swedlow

    1. Jason R. Swedlow is at the School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, Dundee DD1 5EH, UK, and also at Wellcome Leap, Los Angeles, California, USA.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  2. Lucy Collinson

    1. Lucy Collinson is at the Francis Crick Institute, London NW1 1AT, UK.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

One long-sought goal of cell biology is the full and complete determination of the structure and composition of a single cell. If we could name every molecule that makes up a cell, know each molecule’s location, map how the molecules interact, and understand how they come together to construct organelles and determine organelle function, we would have the building blocks needed to understand cellular physiology. Writing in Nature, Xu et al.1 and Heinrich et al.2 present combined advances in data acquisition and machine-learning (ML)-based analysis in microscopy that move us closer to achieving this objective.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Nature 599, 39-40 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02776-0

References

  1. Xu, C. S. et al. Nature 599, 147–151 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Heinrich, L. et al. Nature 599, 141–146 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Heymann, J. A. W. et al. J. Struct. Biol. 155, 63–73 (2006).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Hildebrand, D. G. C. et al. Nature 545, 345–349 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  5. Helmstaedter, M. et al. Nature 500, 168–174 (2013).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  6. Zheng, Z. et al. Cell 174, 730–743 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  7. Scheffer, L. K. et al. eLife 9, e57443 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  8. Müller, A. et al. J. Cell Biol. 220, e202010039 (2021).

    Google Scholar 

  9. Perez, A. J. et al. Front. Neuroanat. 8, 126 (2014).

    Google Scholar 

  10. Liu, J. et al. Front. Neurosci. 14, 599 (2020).

    Google Scholar 

  11. Guay, M. D. et al. Sci. Rep. 11, 2561 (2021).

    Google Scholar 

  12. Spiers, H. et al. Traffic 22, 240–253 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  13. Hollandi, R. et al. Cell Syst. 10, 453–458 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  14. Stringer, C., Wang, T., Michaelos, M. & Pachitariu, M. Nature Methods 18, 100–106 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  15. Schmidt, U., Weigert, M., Broaddus, C. & Myers, G. in Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention – MICCAI 2018 (eds Frangi, A. F., Schnabel, J. A., Davatzikos, C., López Alberola, C. & Fichtinger, G.) 265–273 (Springer, 2018).

    Google Scholar 

  16. Ellenberg, J. et al. Nature Methods 15, 849–854 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Subjects

Latest on:

Nature Careers

Jobs

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Advanced search

Quick links