Department of Cell Biology and Physiology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.
Department of Pharmacology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.
Curr Opin Cell Biol. 2024 Oct;90:102418. doi: 10.1016/j.ceb.2024.102418. Epub 2024 Aug 18.
Cell biology emerges from spatiotemporally coordinated molecular processes. Recent advances in live-cell microscopy, fueled by a surge in optical, molecular, and computational technologies, have enabled dynamic observations from single molecules to whole organisms. Despite technological leaps, there is still an untapped opportunity to fully leverage their capabilities toward biological insight. We highlight how single-molecule imaging has transformed our understanding of biological processes, with a focus on chromatin organization and transcription in the nucleus. We describe how this was enabled by the close integration of new imaging techniques with analysis tools and discuss the challenges to make a comparable impact at larger scales from organelles to organisms. By highlighting recent successful examples, we describe an outlook of ever-increasing data and the need for seamless integration between dataset visualization and quantification to realize the full potential warranted by advances in new imaging technologies.
细胞生物学源于时空协调的分子过程。近年来，由于光学、分子和计算技术的突飞猛进，活细胞显微镜技术取得了进展，使我们能够从单个分子到整个生物体进行动态观察。尽管技术有了飞跃，但仍有机会充分利用这些技术来深入了解生物学。我们重点介绍了单分子成像如何改变我们对生物过程的理解，特别是细胞核中的染色质组织和转录。我们描述了如何通过将新技术与分析工具紧密结合来实现这一目标，并讨论了在更大尺度上（从细胞器到生物体）产生类似影响所面临的挑战。通过突出最近的成功案例，我们描述了数据不断增加的前景，以及在数据集可视化和量化之间实现无缝集成的必要性，以充分发挥新成像技术进步带来的潜力。
