Supercomputing has been gaining attention for its applications across biomedical research. A type of high-performance computing...

Cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) can offer unique insights on biological molecules, enabling investigators to piece together complex structures.

To understand human physiology and the pathology of diseases, it is important to investigate the underlying biological processes on all spatial scales. These scales range from the patient to organs, to tissues within an organ, to individual cells within the tissue, to molecular machines within the cells, down to the atomic level. The detailed knowledge of macromolecular interactions within and in between cells in a given tissue, combined with an integrated view of an organism, significantly increases the chances for finding new cures.

A convergence of scientific breakthroughs in chemistry, optics, and engineering in the early 1800s resulted in a miraculous new way to understand life—the light microscope. Microscopic studies of a wide range of samples by Johannes Müller and his protégés Matthias Schlieden, Theodor Schwann, and Rudolf Virchow resulted in a scientific epiphany and one of the most profound and useful revelations in history: Cells are the building blocks of all living organisms.