Scientists from Heidelberg have managed for the first time ever to perform a three-dimensional scan of a single human cell, and – likewise for the first time – have made visible individual proteins that make up a cell. Three-dimensional scans of a human body are routine, but until now there has not been an equivalent scan of a cell.
“This is a real breakthrough,” said Dr. Achilleas Frangakis, leader of the research team from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Heidelberg. “Never before has it been possible to look in three dimensions at a tissue so close to its native state at such a high resolution.” The researchers used a relatively new microscope that employs “cryo-electron tomography,” which differs from standard electron microscopes that require a vacuum and also require that samples be coated in a layer of metal, ruling out views of a living cell.
The first 3D photograph is of a skin cell, and the scientists concentrated on a class of proteins in the cell called “cadherins,” which act as a kind of Velcro that binds cells in skin and in other organs together. Cadherins form a barrier that cancer must overcome before it can spread. Dr. Frangakis said the new technology lets scientists actually observe the way molecules that underlie cell adhesion interact: “We can now see details at the scale of a few millionths of a millimeter.” Researchers believe the new technology will reveal clues which will lead to stopping the spread of cancer from a single tumor to other parts of the body.
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