Science & technology | Zooming in

Making the invisible visible

A new imaging technique can reveal tiny protein structures like never before

In these two images, the magenta signal is the amyloid-beta nanostructure, revealed by post-expansion staining. The left image shows the thread-like patterns of amyloid-beta nanoclusters, and the right image shows the helical structure of amyloid-beta, which was not revealed using previous techniques.Credits:Image: Zhuyu Peng and Jinyoung Kang

In 1665 robert hooke, a British polymath, published “Micrographia”, a book in which he described using what was then still a relatively new instrument—the microscope—to investigate the tiniest structures of everything from rocks to insects. Zooming in on a slice of cork, he saw a honeycomb-like structure and coined the term “cell” to describe the tiny pores he saw.

This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Zooming in”

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