The observation of living cells is undergoing a revolution as various techniques have increased the resolution of microscopy images to the nanometer scale. Cells are crowded, complex, three-dimensional environments. That makes the full panoply hard to study simultaneously because much of it takes place above or below the microscope’s narrow focal plane.
One way of solving this is a technique known as expansion microscopy, in which the cell is filled with a polymer that expands when it is placed in water. This inflates the cell, separating and enlarging the structures so they can be more easily studied. But it also kills the cell which cannot then be cultured or studied in more detail as it ages.
So cell biologists would dearly like to have a way to study the entire structure of a cell in one take, without killing it off in the process.
