Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
A New DNA Imaging Tool Lets Scientists Look Inside Cells In A Way That's More Like Google Maps Than Traditional Microscopes
Peering inside cells has been an integral part of biology ever since the 17th century, when cells were discovered under a microscope. But even with advances in light and electron microscopy, researchers who want to understand where various molecules are inside a cell — and thus how cells like neurons, immune cells and tumors differ from one another — can glean only so much. Now, scientists have come up with a new way to capture what’s going on in there. (Sheikh, 6/20)
Joshua Weinstein of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard spent the last six years almost singlehandedly working to fulfill that wish, and on Thursday he unveiled the result: a “DNA microscope” that shows not only the locations of DNA (and its cousin, RNA) in a cell but also the precise nucleotide-by-nucleotide identity of each molecule. (Begley, 6/20)
