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A Cell Observatory to reveal the subcellular foundations of life

Nature Methods volume 22, pages 646–649 (2025)Cite this article

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Imaging the 4D choreography of subcellular events in living multicellular organisms at high spatiotemporal resolution could reveal life’s fundamental principles. Yet extracting these principles from petabyte-scale image data requires fusing advanced light microscopy and cutting-edge machine learning models with biological insight and expertise.

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Fig. 1: From imaging to understanding: AI as a tool to unravel the complexity of living systems.

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Acknowledgements

I am very grateful for the many colleagues who critiqued and help hone this Comment, but I am particularly indebted to Gokul Upadhyayula, assistant professor and director of the Advanced Bioimaging Center (ABC) at UC Berkeley, for visionary discussions and for his patience in teaching this old dog some new tricks. E.B. is funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) with additional support from the Eugene D. Commins Chair in Experimental Physics at UC Berkeley. Additional funding for the ABC comes from the Philomathia Foundation.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Eric Betzig

  2. Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Eric Betzig

  3. Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Eric Betzig

  4. Advanced Bioimaging Center, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Eric Betzig

  5. Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Eric Betzig

  6. Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, VA, USA

    Eric Betzig

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  1. Eric Betzig
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Correspondence to Eric Betzig.

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Competing interests

E.B. is inventor or co-inventor of the following relevant US patents: patents 7,894,136, 8,711,211 and 9,477,074, licensed to Carl Zeiss Microscopy; and patents 9,500,846 and 10,051,240, assigned to HHMI. E.B. is also a cofounder of Eikon Therapeutics.

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Nature Methods thanks Philip Hockberger and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Betzig, E. A Cell Observatory to reveal the subcellular foundations of life. Nat Methods 22, 646–649 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-024-02379-3

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