Making the Invisible Visible
17th June 2026
Inside every living cell, tens of thousands of different types of proteins are at work: ferrying molecular cargo, relaying signals, repairing DNA, deciding whether a cell should divide or die. Most of these proteins are too small to image with existing microscopes. Those that can be imaged must be pulled out of the cell and studied in isolation — not in the crowded, dynamic environments that drive the processes of life.
That is about to change. In three papers, researchers at Biohub and UC Berkeley report successful results from a technology called a laser phase plate, which uses a laser 100 million times brighter than the Sun to significantly improve the contrast of images produced by cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM). The laser phase plate could make otherwise faint, blurry proteins inside intact cells visible, including many proteins most relevant to human disease.
“Rough estimates suggest that scientists can image 10% of the human proteome in purified form using existing cryo-EM — and fewer than 1% of proteins in their native cellular environment,” says Scott Fraser, president of dynamic imaging at Biohub. Scientists believe the laser phase plate could make more than 50% of the proteins that carry out cellular functions visible.
“This is just the first step,” says Bridget Carragher, founding technical director of imaging at Biohub. “It’s like seeing first light through a telescope. The science it enables — that comes next.”