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Blood Running Cold

Even the coldest parts of planet Earth never reach -150℃. You’d have to travel to Saturn to find that or … to a lab harnessing cryogenics. A type of high-resolution imaging called cryo-SEM (scanning electron microscopy) relies on such low temperatures, achieved using high pressure, to freeze samples before subjecting them to electron microscopy. This approach ensures cells are well-preserved, not losing integrity along with vital and dynamic biological details as they’re prepared for high-res probing. Here, researchers look at the effectiveness of cryo-SEM to analyse samples gathered in haematological research – such as blood and bone marrow. They show that high pressure cryo-SEM of healthy human blood (pictured) preserves cells in groups and individually, as well as their ultrastructure without introducing any structural defects. This opens up new avenues of investigation for the field of haematology.

Written by Lux Fatimathas

Image from work by Irina Davidovich, Carina Levin and Yeshayahu Talmon

Department of Chemical Engineering and the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute (RBNI), Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial – NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Published in Journal of Microscopy, May 2025

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Make Some Peroxisomes!

Inside cells are a host of 'mini-organs', structures known as organelles. One such is the peroxisome, which is multi-functional, involved in both the breaking down and synthesising of different vital molecules. Now, researchers have discovered that provision of the right number of peroxisomes needed by the cell at any one time is regulated by an enzyme called PKC

Made with Leica Microsystems microscopy

Read the published research article here

Image from work by Anya Borisyuk and colleagues

Global Health Institute, Faculty of Life Sciences, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland & School of Biological Sciences, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in Journal of Cell Biology, July 2025

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Peripheral Vision

Tissue clearing allows the structural preservation of proteins in a tissue, or whole organism, while rendering the specimen transparent. This enables light-microscope imaging of cells and structures within much thicker sections of tissue than would otherwise be possible. Now, scientists have stretched the capabilities of this technique to generate the first ever fluorescence imaging of the entire peripheral nervous system of a mouse. The whole-body tissue clearing required decalcification and delipidation (chemical removal of the animal’s bones and fat), and this was followed by fluorescent immunostaining (antibody-based protein tagging) of the nerve structures. The specimen was then embedded in a hydrogel block and repeatedly sliced and imaged until the entire length of the body had been systematically captured. The 3D reconstruction of those images (shown) offers an unprecedented view of the cellular circuitry of the peripheral nerves and sets the stage for similar studies of such wiring during development and disease.

Written by Ruth Williams

Video from work by Mei-Yu Shi, Yuchen Yao and Miao Wang, and colleagues

Hefei National Research Center for Physical Sciences at the Microscale; Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, CAS Key Laboratory of Brain Function & Disease, University of Science & Technology of China, Anhui, China

Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in Cell, July 2025

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Developing a Kidney

Human foetal kidney-derived organoids are successfully grown for prolonged periods in the lab providing faithful models of kidney development and for disease and regenerative studies. The models reveal the role of the Notch signalling pathway of molecules in controlling early human kidney development

Read the published research article here

Image from work by Michael Namestnikov and colleagues

The Pediatric Stem Cell Research Institute and Pediatric Nephrology Division, Edmond and Lily Safra Children’s Hospital, Sheba Medical Center, Tel HaShomer, Israel

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in The EMBO Journal, July 2025

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Look Again

Every time you look back at a beautiful painting, you might see something new. Researchers admire their biological samples with the same reverence, often analysing one sample in cycles, each time examining different molecules to build a complete picture. Establishing markers in the sample to align each viewing is important, especially if they have been physically expanded to show the detail more clearly. Now a team has created a new algorithm using a denser labelling system for more accurate 3D alignment – something that becomes tricky after repeated tissue expansion and imaging. The results are detailed 3D images that show the precise location of molecules in a sample such as a tumour or the pictured mouse brain slice – a composite after five rounds of imaging, with colours reflecting different molecules such as a structural protein in green, excitatory neurons in gold, and brain support cells in pink.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Image from work by Hyunwoo Kim and Joon-Goon Kim, and colleagues

Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Graduate School of Medical Science and Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, Republic of Korea

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in PLOS Biology, July 2025

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Revealing Organoids

An AI-based pipeline that combines advanced machine learning with classical image analysis for high-throughput 3D screening of whole organoids and at nuclear and cytoplasmic levels

Read the published research article here

Clipped video from work by Hui Ting Ong and Esra Karatas and colleagues

Mechanobiology Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial – NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Published in Nature Methods, May 2025

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Getting Inside

To cause meningitis, bacteria must find a way from the bloodstream into the brain, bypassing the line of defence specifically designed to prevent this: the blood-brain barrier. A team of scientists wanted to examine this intrusion in a living model, rather than in cultured cells in a lab, so turned to transparent zebrafish. They used time-lapse microscopy to observe how Group B Streptococcus, a leading cause of bacterial meningitis in newborns, takes hold. They recorded brain blood vessels (red in the video) as the bacteria (green) formed colonies and perforated the endothelial cells that line the barrier, making a space for bacteria to sneak in. The team identified a toxin involved in damaging the blood vessels, and a gene essential for the destructive process. With this gene silenced, the brain invasion was diminished, which might point to better ways to treat or prevent meningitis.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Video from work by Sumedha Ravishankar and colleagues

School of Biological Sciences, UC San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in PLOS Biology, July 2025

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Cancer Enhancer

This study finds that pre-cancer cells secrete a molecule called Netrin 1 that promotes the sprouting and branching of nerve projections providing local conditions ripe for cancer progression

Read the published research article here

Image from work by Hiba Haidar and colleagues

Aix-Marseille University, CNRS, IBDM, Marseille, France

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial – NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Published in Nature Communications, August 2025

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Sleeper Cells

Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria, shown here (coloured pink) in the lung tissue of a mouse, are responsible for the most deadly infectious disease in the world: tuberculosis, which kills around 1.25 million people annually. While the existing vaccine protects infants against a certain severe form of the disease, it offers little protection to adults against the more common form affecting the lungs. Scientists have long wondered why the vaccine-trained immune system often fails to eradicate such infections. And recent discoveries suggest an answer: the sneaky bugs essentially play dead during a strong immune response, staying dormant until the threat passes. Indeed, genetic screens revealed that genes encoding proteins involved in stress response and dormancy were important for bacterial survival in pre-vaccinated, infected mice, while those encoding virulence factors were not. It’s hoped these insights into the bacteria’s survival strategy will inform new treatments to outwit the evasive killer.

Written by Ruth Williams

Image from work by Kimra S. James and colleagues

Division of Microbiology & Immunology, Department of Pathology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

Image originally published as 'with credit only' – Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Research published in NPJ Vaccines, May 2025

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Power of Peroxide

Organs such as our intestines and lungs are at risk to damage from the outside world. A lining of epithelial cells aims to protect them. When breached, researchers have found that repair is promoted by bursts of hydrogen peroxide H2O2 from a protein called DUOX2 impacting the cells inner scaffold to catalyse cell connections (like the tube formation seen here) and migration

Read the published research article here

Image from work by Maurice O’Mara, Suisheng Zhang & Ulla G. Knaus

Conway Institute, School of Medicine, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in Nature Communications, July 2025

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Zelda’s Link

Life is a perilous quest, for humans as well as the fruit flies (Drosophila) that share many of our genes. After injury, our tissues must heal quickly, but then switch off this accelerated growth or risk cancers forming – but how? Here researchers investigate how a protein called Zelda, a transcription factor with the power to switch fly genes ‘on’ or ‘off’, affects the healing of damaged parts of drosophila wings. In undamaged wings (left column), blocking Zelda has little effect on the wings’ healthy patterns (bottom compared to top). But interrupting Zelda in healing wings (bottom middle and right) leaves them overgrown, losing their patterns. Zelda could be the key to the return to peace after the drama of healing. And searching for Zelda (named, of course, after a famous princess) or similar proteins in human cells, might provide clues to our return to questing, after we recover full health.

Written by John Ankers

Image from work by Anish Bose and colleagues

Cell and Developmental Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Published in Science Advances, June 2025

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Pressure Governor

Cell migration–inducing protein (CMIP) controls contractility of blood vessel wall cells to maintain blood pressure. CMIP is represented here in green and sites where it binds other molecules important for its function in red and blue

Read the published research article here

Image from work by Ze Yuan and colleagues

The Province and Ministry Co-Sponsored Collaborative Innovation Center for Medical Epigenetics, Tianjin Medical University, China.

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial – NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Published in Circulation Research, July 2025

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Lighting a Fuse

Proteins are tiny biological machines that do vital jobs in our cells and tissues. They’re made to very precise instructions in a sort of 'protein factory' called the ribosome. But the ribosomes themselves are made in the nucleolus – a tiny organ, or organelle, that is fairly unusual. Nucleoli don’t have membranes, leaving their wobbly structures more influenced by the stresses and strains inside cells. Here researchers investigate how these forces affect several gloopy nucleoli that have fused together (highlighted in purple). Denser, more viscoelastic, regions inside (green) also merge, although more slowly. What does it mean that these vital organelles slosh around our cells? The team are investigating other factors that affect the fluidity of the nucleolus, which may have huge implications for our understanding of cellular life in health and disease.

Written by John Ankers

Video from work by Holly H. Cheng and colleagues

Department of Molecular Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), May 2025

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Tick Off

Have you ever been put off using an insect repellant because of the toxic chemicals it contains? This, plus growing fears of resistance to chemical repellents, has prompted interest in plant-derived repellants to ward off ticks and suppress the tick-borne diseases that threaten human and animal health. Ticks make up for limited vision and hearing with a strong sense of smell, but the mechanisms of tick olfaction aren’t well understood. Researchers have discovered the Haller’s organ (pictured under scanning electron microscopy), a sensory organ on their front legs with protruding sensory hairs and two openings, is the key organ for detecting cinnamaldehyde, a component of cinnamon oil known to repel ticks. The team identified a receptor and binding site that specifically responds to cinnamaldehyde, triggering a response through Haller’s organs. Understanding this process is key to developing naturally-derived repellants to help cross ticks off the list of problems.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Image from work by Ceyan Kuang and colleagues

Key Laboratory of Animal Parasitology of Ministry of Agriculture, Shanghai Veterinary Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Shanghai, China

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, March 2025

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Fish for Melanoma

Zebrafish model of mucosal melanoma – a form of the aggressive skin cancer that develops on the lining of internal organs – mimics patient tumours and is therefore useful for treatment discovery studies

Read the published research article here

Image from work by Swathy Babu and colleagues

Department of Medical Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial – NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Published in Nature Communications, July 2025

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Jammed Transmission

A driver in a traffic jam blasts an annoying catchy song. The next driver hears it, and whistles along. Then another hums it, and soon the whole street is a cacophony of unsynchronised earworms. The song might have been contained within the first car by a closed window, and that’s what a new molecule may do for dysentery-causing Shigella flexneri infections, which spread between cells lining the intestine's colon. The bacteria use a host cell’s internal skeleton to create protrusions towards neighbouring cells, which bud off as sac-like structures known as vacuoles to transmit the infection. A study identified a protein required for this conversion from protrusion to vacuole, and a molecule that inhibits it, thus preventing spread (pictured, red bacteria limited to isolated spots in an infected rabbit colon after treatment with the inhibitor). This could be a new route to treatment for a condition with no vaccine and increasing risk of drug resistance.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Image from work by Steven J. Rolland and colleagues

Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Cancer Biology, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, Virginia, VA, USA

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Published in PLOS Pathogens, May 2025

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Ball of Nerves

We have a lot of potential, but sometimes it needs unleashing – especially in our cells. The embryonic stem cells we develop from have the potential to become many different tissues, from nerve to skin to muscle and more. Imagine, then, if we could unlock that potential in ageing bodies. Here, researchers change the patterns of genes 'switched on' inside adult skin cells from a mouse, reprogramming them to behave more like a nerve cells [neurons]. They bathe the cells in a series of chemical cocktails that guide transcription factors inside the changing cells over 30 days. Growing these 'induced' neuron cells in 3D helps with their transformation – cells in these spheres send out glowing bursts of calcium, just like established neurons. Similar approaches might one day generate a fresh supply of neurons to help to treat neurodegenerative diseases in human patients.

Written by John Ankers

Video from work by Janko Kajtez & Kerstin Laurin, and colleagues

Department of Experimental Medical Sciences, Wallenberg Neuroscience Center, Division of Neurobiology and Lund Stem Cell Center, BMC A11, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Published in Science Advances, June 2025

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