Life in HD

High definition televisions make everything look sharp and crisp – individual blades of grass sway on football fields, the occasional hair might be spotted on a celebrity’s chin. So just imagine what our insides might look like in HD. Here, a technique called Structured Illumination Microscopy was used to sharpen-up the textures of a single human cell. Hundreds of low-resolution images were taken from slightly different angles, then reconstructed into a high-resolution image to reveal tiny hidden structures. Rather than appearing as a blur, we can see individual ‘bones’ in the cytoplasm’s skeleton. Each microtubule, highlighted here in green, is 50,000 times smaller than a human rib and works to protect the cell’s precious energy factories, the mitochondria, highlighted in pink. One can only wonder about the future - what other hidden details might be revealed by pulling the world inside us into focus?

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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• Andrew York
• National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, NIH, USA
• Reprinted by permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd: Nature Methods Copyright 2012
• Published in Nature Methods 9: 749-754