Scientists at UC Berkeley and Stanford have developed breakthrough microscopes that dramatically improve our ability to see inside living cells. Berkeley's laser phase plate supercharges cryo-electron microscopy to image tiny proteins previously too small to study, while Stanford's label-free system watches cellular structures move in real time. Together, these tools could transform drug discovery, cancer research, and our understanding of disease at the molecular level.
Scientists at UC Berkeley and Stanford have independently unveiled revolutionary microscopy technologies that could transform how we study life at the cellular level — and what we can do about disease.
The Berkeley team developed a laser phase plate that supercharges cryoelectron microscopy (cryo-EM) by using the world's most intense focused continuous-wave laser to boost image contrast. The result: researchers can now image proteins as small as 50 kilodaltons — well below the ~70 kilodalton threshold that has long stumped conventional cryo-EM. The team named their upgraded microscope Theia and published findings in Science. Meanwhile, Stanford scientists built the Interferometric Image Scanning Microscopy (iISM) system, which achieves 120-nanometer resolution in living cells — without fluorescent labels — allowing real-time observation of cellular structures interacting with drugs, cancer agents, and pathogens.
Both teams are already pursuing collaborations spanning cancer treatment, infectious disease, and plant biology.
By the Numbers
Why it matters: Most of the human proteome has been effectively invisible to existing tools. These breakthroughs could unlock structural insights into thousands of unstudied proteins, accelerating drug discovery and fundamentally changing how scientists understand — and potentially treat — disease.
