* . *
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact
Tuesday, August 19, 2025
Earth-News
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    ‘The Lucky Ones’: Mae Ngai Sells Film & TV Rights To Neurosphere Entertainment – Deadline

    The Lucky Ones’: Mae Ngai Lands Thrilling Deal for Film and TV Adaptations

    Our picks for the best things to do in Cincinnati this week, Aug. 18-24 – Cincinnati Enquirer

    Unmissable Things to Do in Cincinnati This Week, Aug. 18-24

    Terence Stamp: from arthouse icon to blockbuster villain – yahoo.com

    Terence Stamp: From Arthouse Legend to Hollywood’s Ultimate Villain

    Community & Entertainment redefined: The summer fun continues with Villagio Hospitality! – WJLA

    Summer Fun Redefined: Create Unforgettable Moments with Villagio Hospitality!

    Iconic ‘M*A*S*H’ Actor, 86, Has Fans Swooning Over Resurfaced Images: ‘My Crush Since ’75’ – yahoo.com

    Iconic ‘M*A*S*H’ Actor, 86, Has Fans Swooning Over Resurfaced Images: ‘My Crush Since ’75’ – yahoo.com

    ‘The Rainmaker’ Premiere: Milo Callaghan Breaks Down Rudy Baylor’s ‘Misguided Valor’ – The Laconia Daily Sun

    Inside ‘The Rainmaker’ Premiere: Milo Callaghan Uncovers the Real Story Behind Rudy Baylor’s Misguided Valor

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    YSU to celebrate launch of new radiology technology program – WKBN.com

    YSU Launches Exciting New Radiology Technology Program Celebration

    Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology kicks off return to school for Lancaster County colleges [photos] – LancasterOnline

    Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology Kicks Off an Exciting New School Year for Lancaster County Colleges [Photos]

    Empyrean Technology’s revenue climbs, but profit plunges 92% in EDA spending squeeze – digitimes

    Empyrean Technology’s Revenue Skyrockets as Profits Plunge 92% Amid EDA Spending Crunch

    5G-A technology provides strong support for China’s football sensation Suchao – Global Times

    How 5G-A Technology is Revolutionizing China’s Football Star Suchao

    AI’s backyard: A map of the 21st-century gold rush – EL PAÍS English

    The AI Frontier: Exploring the Thrilling Gold Rush of the 21st Century

    Youxin Technology Ltd Faces Nasdaq Deficiency Notices Over Listing Compliance Issues

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    ‘The Lucky Ones’: Mae Ngai Sells Film & TV Rights To Neurosphere Entertainment – Deadline

    The Lucky Ones’: Mae Ngai Lands Thrilling Deal for Film and TV Adaptations

    Our picks for the best things to do in Cincinnati this week, Aug. 18-24 – Cincinnati Enquirer

    Unmissable Things to Do in Cincinnati This Week, Aug. 18-24

    Terence Stamp: from arthouse icon to blockbuster villain – yahoo.com

    Terence Stamp: From Arthouse Legend to Hollywood’s Ultimate Villain

    Community & Entertainment redefined: The summer fun continues with Villagio Hospitality! – WJLA

    Summer Fun Redefined: Create Unforgettable Moments with Villagio Hospitality!

    Iconic ‘M*A*S*H’ Actor, 86, Has Fans Swooning Over Resurfaced Images: ‘My Crush Since ’75’ – yahoo.com

    Iconic ‘M*A*S*H’ Actor, 86, Has Fans Swooning Over Resurfaced Images: ‘My Crush Since ’75’ – yahoo.com

    ‘The Rainmaker’ Premiere: Milo Callaghan Breaks Down Rudy Baylor’s ‘Misguided Valor’ – The Laconia Daily Sun

    Inside ‘The Rainmaker’ Premiere: Milo Callaghan Uncovers the Real Story Behind Rudy Baylor’s Misguided Valor

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    YSU to celebrate launch of new radiology technology program – WKBN.com

    YSU Launches Exciting New Radiology Technology Program Celebration

    Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology kicks off return to school for Lancaster County colleges [photos] – LancasterOnline

    Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology Kicks Off an Exciting New School Year for Lancaster County Colleges [Photos]

    Empyrean Technology’s revenue climbs, but profit plunges 92% in EDA spending squeeze – digitimes

    Empyrean Technology’s Revenue Skyrockets as Profits Plunge 92% Amid EDA Spending Crunch

    5G-A technology provides strong support for China’s football sensation Suchao – Global Times

    How 5G-A Technology is Revolutionizing China’s Football Star Suchao

    AI’s backyard: A map of the 21st-century gold rush – EL PAÍS English

    The AI Frontier: Exploring the Thrilling Gold Rush of the 21st Century

    Youxin Technology Ltd Faces Nasdaq Deficiency Notices Over Listing Compliance Issues

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
Earth-News
No Result
View All Result
Home Science

A novel spray device helps researchers capture fast-moving cell processes

June 7, 2024
in Science
A novel spray device helps researchers capture fast-moving cell processes
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

A novel spray device helps researchers capture fast-moving cell processes

Time-resolved images of the sample cell. Left: This is the earliest image take of the reaction. The green line is the s-layer of the cell; the maroon line is the outer membrane; and the cyan pointer is the inner membrane. Right: The cell and layers at a later time. Credit: Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Cells are the basic units of life—but many of their fundamental processes happen so fast and at such small length scales that current scientific tools and methods can’t keep up, preventing us from developing a deeper understanding.

Now, researchers with SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University, Cornell University and other institutions have developed a new approach for watching basic biological processes unfold. The approach, which combines cryogenic electron microscopes with methods developed in X-ray crystallography, could lead to improved medicines and a deeper understanding of cell division, photosynthesis and host-pathogen interactions, among other subjects.

Their study is published in the journal Molecular Biology of the Cell.

“Many cellular processes happen on a millisecond timescale,” SLAC scientist and paper co-author Pete Dahlberg said. “With our new technique, we can poke a cell and then pick a moment in time that we want to snap a clear image of its response.”

Credit: Molecular Biology of the Cell (2024). DOI: 10.1091/mbc.E24-01-0042

Reimagining a powerful spray tool

For many decades, scientists have relied on imaging techniques known as cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and cryogenic electron tomography (cryo-ET) to see inside of cells, proteins, and other organisms and molecules. Both techniques use electron microscopes to capture snapshots of flash-frozen samples, which have revealed cellular structures in extraordinary detail.

These approaches involve putting a sample on a thin small disk known as an electron microscopy grid and plunging it into a cryogenic liquid to freeze it very rapidly. This is great at preserving cellular samples in their native state, but the frozen snapshots don’t tell researchers much about dynamics. It is sort of like trying to learn dance moves by taking random images of someone dancing.

Currently, in similar cryo-ET experiments, researchers hand-mix cell samples in order to take images of them in response to stimuli. But hand-mixing takes time, kind of like mixing pancake batter by hand instead of with an electric mixer, meaning that experimenters can only observe changes in an organism at about ten second intervals—hundreds of times longer than many important processes take.

“When you hand-mix and freeze cells in cryo-ET experiments, you are often too slow to capture the changes you really care about. That can limit your ability to understand important biological processes,” SLAC researcher and paper co-author Cali Antolini said.

Researchers therefore turned to a spray nozzle device that is often used at X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) and synchrotron facilities to mix samples for crystallography experiments. The device, known as a mixing injector coupled Gas Dynamic Virtual Nozzle (GDVN), is often used to study molecular movements that occur on extremely short timescales, like femtoseconds after activation with light or on millisecond to second timescales using chemical mixing, at XFELs like SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS).

A novel spray device helps researchers capture fast-moving cell processes

A graphic representation of the spray nozzle device. The sample cells (green) mix with the simulant solution as the cells travel from left to right, out of the spray nozzle. Credit: Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

“The spray device at LCLS allows researchers to look at the movements of atoms in microcrystals,” Dahlberg said. “But to my mind, spraying microcrystal samples and spraying cell samples are the same thing.”

“We wanted to combine light source and cryo-ET techniques as much as possible,” SLAC and Stanford professor and senior co-author Soichi Wakatsuki said. “We knew that doing so would be fruitful for microbiology and medicine development.”

With their new approach, researchers sprayed and froze cell samples that had been mixed with a stimulant in milliseconds, rather than 10 seconds, the time hand-mixing takes. This allowed researchers to take images of the cell sample every 25 milliseconds and see changes on that time scale.

“Our new approach helped to identify and characterize some of the interesting morphological changes in the cells that we began to see over the course of our time-resolved experiments,” Stanford University graduate student and paper co-author Jacob Summers said.

From jet to mist

Researchers from Cornell University re-engineered LCLS’s spray nozzle to work for the cryo-ET experiment. But it wasn’t as simple as walking the spray device from LCLS over to a cryo-ET machine. The problem was that, at LCLS, the samples are sprayed in a powerful jet formation—like a garden hose set on jet. This force and pressure would not work for cryo-ET experiments because samples are sprayed onto a thin, fragile grid surface, which would probably break under the force of a jet stream.

Therefore, researchers adjusted the gas flow rate through the nozzle—kind of like changing the setting on a garden hose from jet to mist. With this adjustment, they created a fine spray rather than a powerful stream.

Since this was a relatively new technique, the correct conditions for creating a misty spray were virtually unexplored, said Kara Zielinski, a researcher at Cornell and paper co-author. They had to test a lot of different experimental conditions, like the liquid flow rate, gas flow rate, distance of the sprayer to the grid, and even the grid type to find the optimal conditions for high quality grids and data collection, she said.

The researchers also varied the flow rates of cell and stimulant solutions within the spray device, in effect controlling how fast a sample mixed together and starting the clock for the cellular reactions researchers want to study.

Now that the researchers have proven this new technique, it could be applied to a wide variety of questions about structural dynamics on the cellular level, Zielinski said.

“It is always exciting to be part of the beginning of a new method because it often means opening up entirely new avenues of biological questions,” she said. “The opportunities are endless as we can now trigger cellular dynamics by mixing in small molecules and capture direct structural evidence of its effects.”

“I’m most excited about what this method could lead to in the future,” said Joey Yoniles, paper co-author and Stanford University graduate student. “Even if we just consider bacteria like we did in this study, we could look at the interaction between bacteria and drugs at extremely high resolution.”

More information:
Joseph Yoniles et al, Time-resolved cryogenic electron tomography for the study of transient cellular processes, Molecular Biology of the Cell (2024). DOI: 10.1091/mbc.E24-01-0042

Citation:
A novel spray device helps researchers capture fast-moving cell processes (2024, June 6)
retrieved 7 June 2024
from https://phys.org/news/2024-06-spray-device-capture-fast-cell.html

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.

>>> Read full article>>>
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source : Phys.org – https://phys.org/news/2024-06-spray-device-capture-fast-cell.html

Tags: Novelsciencespray
Previous Post

Tropical forests adjust strategies to thrive even when soils are nutrient poor, large field experiment shows

Next Post

Study: The climate crisis, policy distraction and support for fuel taxation

180 Years of Standing Up for Science – Scientific American

180 Years of Standing Up for Science – Scientific American

August 19, 2025
Scientists reveal how just two human decisions rewired the Great Salt Lake forever – ScienceDaily

Scientists reveal how just two human decisions rewired the Great Salt Lake forever – ScienceDaily

August 19, 2025
Lifestyle Changes That Help With Psoriasis – HealthCentral

Lifestyle Changes That Help With Psoriasis – HealthCentral

August 19, 2025
YSU to celebrate launch of new radiology technology program – WKBN.com

YSU Launches Exciting New Radiology Technology Program Celebration

August 19, 2025
WAMC Sports Report 8/19/25: Turner, Harper power Phillies to 12-7 rout of Mariners – WAMC

Turner and Harper Spark Phillies to an Electrifying 12-7 Win Over Mariners

August 19, 2025
The best ways to search the Tulsa World Archive of millions of stories – Tulsa World

Unlock Hidden Stories: Top Tips for Exploring the Tulsa World Archive

August 19, 2025
Global Economic Outlook: August 2025 – Seeking Alpha

August 2025 Global Economic Outlook: Unveiling Key Trends and Insights

August 19, 2025
‘The Lucky Ones’: Mae Ngai Sells Film & TV Rights To Neurosphere Entertainment – Deadline

The Lucky Ones’: Mae Ngai Lands Thrilling Deal for Film and TV Adaptations

August 19, 2025
Kearney Public Schools launches new mental health resource for parents – KSNB

Kearney Public Schools Unveils Innovative Mental Health Resource to Support Parents

August 19, 2025
Newsom announces California redistricting push, setting up a standoff with GOP-led opponents – CNN

Newsom announces California redistricting push, setting up a standoff with GOP-led opponents – CNN

August 19, 2025

Categories

Archives

August 2025
MTWTFSS
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031
« Jul    
Earth-News.info

The Earth News is an independent English-language daily published Website from all around the World News

Browse by Category

  • Business (20,132)
  • Ecology (778)
  • Economy (800)
  • Entertainment (21,678)
  • General (16,554)
  • Health (9,839)
  • Lifestyle (812)
  • News (22,149)
  • People (802)
  • Politics (808)
  • Science (16,013)
  • Sports (21,299)
  • Technology (15,781)
  • World (782)

Recent News

180 Years of Standing Up for Science – Scientific American

180 Years of Standing Up for Science – Scientific American

August 19, 2025
Scientists reveal how just two human decisions rewired the Great Salt Lake forever – ScienceDaily

Scientists reveal how just two human decisions rewired the Great Salt Lake forever – ScienceDaily

August 19, 2025
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

Go to mobile version