Eric Betzig‘s lab at the Janelia Research Campus has just released a jaw-dropping high-definition 3D movie of cellular machinery in motion. Words are not sufficient to describe the beauty of the data and the impact of the method which will soon be made available to researchers interested in using or developing it.
I met the man a few times during my postdoctoral life at Bell Laboratories where he was a research scientist. An acknowledged star in a building full of brilliant people, his Near-Field Scanning Optical Microscope was considered Nobel worthy. The Labs went down the tubes a few years later when the MBA visigoths took over. Betzig left, reinvented himself a couple of times, and came back with even more pathbreaking ideas in microscopy that overcame what he felt were insurmountable limitations of his first breakthrough. He went to Stockholm in 2014 for the newer inventions and the doors they opened. The Prize has not slowed him down.
The Janelia public release has details and links to several videos, including the one below.
The technical paper appears in the latest issue of Science Magazine.
Observing the cell in its native state: Imaging subcellular dynamics in multicellular organisms
T. Liu et.al.
Science 360, eaaq1392 (2018). DOI: 10.1126/science.aaq1392
The Abstract is also available through PubMed
Youtube Channel: The Howard Hughes Medical Institute