Perspective
Lighting up the inside of a cell
Human cells are too small to be seen by the naked eye. To observe cells and their substructures, microscopes and visualisation reagents are used. At the section of Molecular Cytology (SILS, UvA), fluorescent proteins are created to target specific compartments of the cell. Expressing these biosensors in a human cell allows simultaneous visualisation of different cellular structures. The image shows three such structures: the nucleus (yellow) containing the cell’s genetic information; mitochondria (red), the energy-generating structures of the cell, and the Golgi apparatus (cyan), the vesicle transport system of the cell.
Š ANNA CHERTKOVA Swammerdam Institute of Life Sciences, UvA https://www.biorxiv.org/content/ early/2017/07/06/160374