AI spots cell structures that humans can't

Susanne Rafelski and her colleagues had a deceptively simple goal. "We wanted to be able to label many different structures in the cell, but do live imaging," says the quantitative cell biologist and deputy director of the Allen Institute for Cell Science in Seattle, Washington. "And we wanted to do it in 3D." That kind of goal normally relies on fluorescence microscopy -- problematic in this case because, with only a handful of colours to use, the scientists would run out of labels well before they ran out of structures. Also problematic is that these reagents are pricey and laborious to use.