* . *
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact
Tuesday, October 7, 2025
Earth-News
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Row K Entertainment Emerges as Major New Hollywood Buyer With Splashy TIFF Shopping Spree – TheWrap

    Row K Entertainment Emerges as Major New Hollywood Buyer With Splashy TIFF Shopping Spree – TheWrap

    Charlie Hunnam Reflects on Playing a Serial Killer in Monster: The Ed Gein Story – Yahoo

    Charlie Hunnam Reveals the Dark Challenges of Playing a Serial Killer in Monster: The Ed Gein Story

    “Reba” cast, then and now: See the stars 24 years later (and who’s reunited for another show) – Yahoo

    “Reba” cast, then and now: See the stars 24 years later (and who’s reunited for another show) – Yahoo

    Why Taylor Swift Name-Dropped Elizabeth Taylor in Her New Album – Yahoo

    Here’s Why Taylor Swift Dropped Elizabeth Taylor’s Name in Her New Album

    Al Roker Gives Olivia Dean an Unexpected ‘New Job’ on the ‘Today’ Show – Yahoo

    Al Roker Shocks Olivia Dean with an Exciting New Role on the ‘Today’ Show

    Books about the arts and some haunts for a Denton October – Denton Record-Chronicle

    Uncover Artistic Treasures and Spooky Adventures to Experience in Denton This October

  • 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
    ARM Institute opens technology project call to speed submarine manufacturing – The Robot Report

    ARM Institute Unveils Cutting-Edge Technology Project to Revolutionize Submarine Manufacturing

    Forget Cowbells. Cows Wear High-Tech Collars Now. – The New York Times

    Ditch the Cowbells: Discover the High-Tech Collars Transforming Cattle Care

    What the Recent Price Surge Means for Figure Technology Solutions After SEC Settlement – Yahoo Finance

    What the Recent Price Surge Reveals About Figure Technology Solutions Following SEC Settlement

    MAC Brings iPad Technology to Football Sidelines Across All 13 Member Schools – Sports Video Group

    MAC Brings iPad Technology to Football Sidelines Across All 13 Member Schools – Sports Video Group

    Technology Is Becoming More Important Than Humans In CX – No Jitter

    Technology Is Becoming More Important Than Humans In CX – No Jitter

    A Tech Expo Shows What China Can Make, but Not Who’ll Buy It All – The New York Times

    Inside China’s Tech Expo: Cutting-Edge Innovations Face Uncertain Demand

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Row K Entertainment Emerges as Major New Hollywood Buyer With Splashy TIFF Shopping Spree – TheWrap

    Row K Entertainment Emerges as Major New Hollywood Buyer With Splashy TIFF Shopping Spree – TheWrap

    Charlie Hunnam Reflects on Playing a Serial Killer in Monster: The Ed Gein Story – Yahoo

    Charlie Hunnam Reveals the Dark Challenges of Playing a Serial Killer in Monster: The Ed Gein Story

    “Reba” cast, then and now: See the stars 24 years later (and who’s reunited for another show) – Yahoo

    “Reba” cast, then and now: See the stars 24 years later (and who’s reunited for another show) – Yahoo

    Why Taylor Swift Name-Dropped Elizabeth Taylor in Her New Album – Yahoo

    Here’s Why Taylor Swift Dropped Elizabeth Taylor’s Name in Her New Album

    Al Roker Gives Olivia Dean an Unexpected ‘New Job’ on the ‘Today’ Show – Yahoo

    Al Roker Shocks Olivia Dean with an Exciting New Role on the ‘Today’ Show

    Books about the arts and some haunts for a Denton October – Denton Record-Chronicle

    Uncover Artistic Treasures and Spooky Adventures to Experience in Denton This October

  • 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
    ARM Institute opens technology project call to speed submarine manufacturing – The Robot Report

    ARM Institute Unveils Cutting-Edge Technology Project to Revolutionize Submarine Manufacturing

    Forget Cowbells. Cows Wear High-Tech Collars Now. – The New York Times

    Ditch the Cowbells: Discover the High-Tech Collars Transforming Cattle Care

    What the Recent Price Surge Means for Figure Technology Solutions After SEC Settlement – Yahoo Finance

    What the Recent Price Surge Reveals About Figure Technology Solutions Following SEC Settlement

    MAC Brings iPad Technology to Football Sidelines Across All 13 Member Schools – Sports Video Group

    MAC Brings iPad Technology to Football Sidelines Across All 13 Member Schools – Sports Video Group

    Technology Is Becoming More Important Than Humans In CX – No Jitter

    Technology Is Becoming More Important Than Humans In CX – No Jitter

    A Tech Expo Shows What China Can Make, but Not Who’ll Buy It All – The New York Times

    Inside China’s Tech Expo: Cutting-Edge Innovations Face Uncertain Demand

    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

UNESCO and CODATA launch resources on open science for crisis response – unesco.org

UNESCO and CODATA Launch Innovative Open Science Tools to Enhance Crisis Response

October 7, 2025
New Engen Report Identifies Key Trends and Winning Strategies for Active Lifestyle Brands in 2025 and Beyond – Fitt Insider

New Engen Report Identifies Key Trends and Winning Strategies for Active Lifestyle Brands in 2025 and Beyond – Fitt Insider

October 7, 2025
ARM Institute opens technology project call to speed submarine manufacturing – The Robot Report

ARM Institute Unveils Cutting-Edge Technology Project to Revolutionize Submarine Manufacturing

October 7, 2025
Seahawks’ defensive depth being challenged as injuries stack up – FOX Sports

Seahawks’ defensive depth being challenged as injuries stack up – FOX Sports

October 7, 2025
World Mental Health Day Festival and gala set for this week in NYC – MSNBC News

World Mental Health Day Festival and gala set for this week in NYC – MSNBC News

October 6, 2025
Green economy means jobs for NJ, report says – NJ Spotlight News

Green economy means jobs for NJ, report says – NJ Spotlight News

October 6, 2025
Row K Entertainment Emerges as Major New Hollywood Buyer With Splashy TIFF Shopping Spree – TheWrap

Row K Entertainment Emerges as Major New Hollywood Buyer With Splashy TIFF Shopping Spree – TheWrap

October 6, 2025
Republicans are holding Americans’ health care hostage — and lying about it – MSNBC News

How Republicans Are Holding Americans’ Health Care Hostage – and Deceiving the Public

October 6, 2025
Irish language: Naomi Long says politicians are playing out ‘culture war’ – BBC

Naomi Long Slams Politicians for Igniting a Divisive ‘Culture War’ Over the Irish Language

October 6, 2025
Air quality speed run – Washington State Department of Ecology (.gov)

Battling Pollution: Washington State’s Urgent Fight for Cleaner Air

October 6, 2025

Categories

Archives

October 2025
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  
« Sep    
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 (854)
  • Economy (875)
  • Entertainment (21,749)
  • General (17,450)
  • Health (9,917)
  • Lifestyle (888)
  • News (22,149)
  • People (876)
  • Politics (886)
  • Science (16,086)
  • Sports (21,376)
  • Technology (15,856)
  • World (858)

Recent News

UNESCO and CODATA launch resources on open science for crisis response – unesco.org

UNESCO and CODATA Launch Innovative Open Science Tools to Enhance Crisis Response

October 7, 2025
New Engen Report Identifies Key Trends and Winning Strategies for Active Lifestyle Brands in 2025 and Beyond – Fitt Insider

New Engen Report Identifies Key Trends and Winning Strategies for Active Lifestyle Brands in 2025 and Beyond – Fitt Insider

October 7, 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